It was at no one’s advice, but because of her own inner yearnings that Warble took a job as waitress in a Bairns’ Restaurant.
She reveled in the white tiles, the white gloss paint, the eternal clearing-up and the clatter of flatware. She loved the flatware—it always made her think of a wedding—sometimes of her own.
She adored the white-capped King Alfred baking his cakes in the window, but merely as a fixture, as she adored the mute stacks of clean plates and the piles of pathetic little serviettes.
In a more intimate and personal way she adored the pork and beans, the ham and eggs, the corned beef and cabbage, and—importantly—the gentle, easy-going puddings and cup custards. These things delighted her soul and dimpled her body.
She was proud of her fellow-waitresses, proud of their aspirations (the same as her own).
Having exceptional opportunity, Warble learned much of culinary art and architecture, at least she became grounded in elementary alimentary science.
She had little notebooks filled with rules for Parisian pastry, Hindu recipes for curry; foreign dishes with modern American improvements.
Joyously she learned to make custard pie. This, as the tumultous future proved, was indicative.
Only the little smiling gods of circumstance, wickedly winking at one another, knew that when Warble whipped cream and beat eggs, she laid the corner stone of a waiting Destiny, known as yet but to the blinking stars above the murky Pittsburgh sky.
She was extravagant as to shoes and diet; and, on the whole, she felt that she was living.
She was not mistaken.
She went to dances, but though sometimes she toddled a bit, mostly she sat out or tucked in.
During her three years as a waitress several customers looked at her with interest though without much principle.
The president of a well-known bank, the proprietor of a folding-bed concern, a retired plumber, a Divinity student and a ticket-chopper.
None of these made her bat an eyelash.
For months no male came up for air. Then, the restaurant door swung back on its noiseless check and spring, and in walked Big Bill Petticoat.
CHAPTER II
The Petticoats were one of the oldest and pride-fullest of New England families. So that settles the status of the Petticoats. A couple of them came over in the Mayflower, with the highboys and cradles and things, and they founded the branch of Connecticut Petticoats—than which, of course, there is nothing more so.
Of course, the Petticoats were not in the very upper circles of society, not in the Dress Circle, so to speak, but they formed a very necessary foundation, they stood for propriety and decency, and the Petticoats were stiff enough to stand alone.
Another fine old New England family, the Cottons.
Intermarriage linked the two, and the Cotton-Petticoats crowded all other ancient and honorable names off the map of Connecticut and nodded condescendingly to the Saltonwells and Hallistalls. Abbotts and Cabots tried to patronize them, but the plain unruffled Cotton-Petticoats held their peace and their position.
The present scion, Dr. Petticoat, was called Big Bill, not because of his name or stature, but because of the size of his bills. He presented them quarterly, and though his medicine was optional—the patient could take it or leave it—the bills had to be paid.
Wherefore Dr. Petticoat was at the head of his profession financially. Also by reputation and achievement, for he had the big idea.
He was a specialist, and, better yet, a specialist in Ptomaine Poisoning.
Rigidly did he adhere to his chosen line, never swerving to right or left. People might die on one side of him from water on the brain and on the other side from water on the palate, not a prescription could they get out of Big Bill Petticoat unless they could put up unmistakable symptoms of ptomaine poisoning.
And he was famous. People brought their ptomaines to him from the far places, his patients included the idlest rich, the bloatedest aristocrats, the most profitable of the profiteers. His Big Bill system worked well, and he was rich beyond the most Freudian dreams of avarice.
As to appearance, Petticoat was very pretty, with that fresh rosy beauty that is so attractive. His walnut hair was fine and silky, but a permanent wave made it fuzz forth in a bushy crinkle that was distractingly lovely. His tweezed eyebrows were arched to a perfect span and his finger nails showed a piano polish.
His features were cold-chiseled and his coloring was exquisite. In fact, his coloring was too good to be true, and no wonder, for it came out of a very modern and up-to-date six-cylinder makeup box.
His lips looked as if they were used to giving orders in restaurants, and he wore clothes which you could never quite forget.
Warble edged toward the stranger, and murmured nothing in particular, but somehow he drifted into the last and only vacant seat at her table.
She whisked him a 2 x 2 napkin, dumped a clatter of flatware at him, and stood, awaiting his order.
The pause becoming lengthy, she murmured with her engaging smile, “Whatcha want to eat?”
“Pleased to eat you,” he responded, looking at her as though she was an agreeable discovery.
Small wonder, for Warble was so peachy and creamy, so sweet and delectable that she was a far more appetizing sight than most viands are. She smiled again—engagingly this time, too.
Thus in the Painted Vale of Huneker, Vamp and Victim beguiled the hours. Thus, and not in treacled cadences, intrigued Mariar and Sir Thomas in the back alley.
“Do you like it here?” asked the doctor.
“Yop. But sometimes I feel wasted—”
“You don’t look wasted—”
“No—” after a hasty glance in the wall mirror.
“Don’t you get sick of the sight of food?”
“Here, oh, no! I don’t know any lovelier sight than our kitchens—yes, yes, sir, I’ll get your pied frotatoes at oneth.”
When Warble was a bit frustrated or embarrassed, she often inverted her initials and lisped. It was one of her ways.
The other clients at her table had no intention of being neglected while their Pickfordian waitress smiled engagingly on a newcomer.
It was the iceman who had hollered. He seemed to be merely a red-faced inanimate object, that worked by strange and compound levers.
Next him was a hat-check girl, a queenly person who communed with something set in the lid of her vanity case, and fed on chicken à la king.
Then there was a newsboy, whose all-observant eyes darted about everywhere, the while he absorbed baked beans and ketchup.
An old maid shopper. She merely brooded over her worn and pencil-scored memorandum, and muttered of fringe and buttons as she spilled tea on her samples of Navy blue foulard.
A blind man. Of no interest save that he had a calm and gentle demeanor and was the only one who didn’t spill things. His face wore a grieved but resigned look, as if something had died in his scrambled eggs. The iceman, who had the hard, set jaw of a prize fighter was successfully eating steak, and he welcomed the incoming fried potatoes, as one greets a new instalment of a serial.
It was a fat and pink and lovely Warble who at last trotted back with Petticoat’s order.
The great specialist had an unbridled passion for pie, and throwing restraint to the winds he had ordered three kinds. The wedges Warble brought were the very widest she could wheedle from the head pie-cutter—and Warble was some wheedler, especially when she coaxed prettily for a big pieth of cuthtard.
Petticoat looked at her again as she came, pie-laden.
Her cap was a bit askew, but her eyes weren’t. In her white