Sewell Ford - Odd Numbers

“She has such an emotional nature!” says Maizie. “Uncle Hen was like that too. But let’s not linger over him. He’s gone. The last thing he did was to let go of a dollar fifty in cash that I held him up for so Phemey and I could go into Duluth and see a show. The end came early next day, and whether it was from shock or enlargement of the heart, no one will ever know.

“It was an awful blow to us all. We went around in a daze for nearly a week, hardly daring to believe that it could be so. Jens broke the spell for us. One morning I caught him helping himself to a cigar out of the two-fer box. ‘Why not?’ says he. Next Phemey walks in, swipes a package of wintergreen gum, and feeds it all in at once. She says, ‘Why not?’ too. Then I woke up. ‘You’re right,’ says I. ‘Enjoy yourself. It’s time.’ Next I hints to her that there are bigger and brighter spots on this earth than Dobie, and asks her what she says to selling the Emporium and hunting them up. ‘I don’t care,’ says she, and that was a good deal of a speech for her to make. ‘Do you leave it to me?’ says I. ‘Uh-huh,’ says she. ‘We-e-e-ough!’ says I,” and with that Maizie lets out one of them backwoods college cries that brings Tidson up on his toes.

“I take it,” says I, “that you did.”

“Did I?” says she. “Inside of three days I’d hustled up four different parties that wanted to invest in a going concern, and before the week was over I’d buncoed one of ’em out of nine thousand in cash. Most of it’s in a certified check, sewed inside of Phemey, and that’s why we walked all the way up here in the rain. Do you suppose you could take me to some bank to-morrow where I could leave that and get a handful of green bills on account? Is that asking too much?”

“Considering the way you’ve brushed up my memory of Sport Blickens,” says I, “it’s real modest. Couldn’t you think of something else?”

“If that had come from Mrs. McCabe,” says she, eyin’ Sadie kind of longin’, “I reckon I could.”

“Why,” says Sadie, “I should be delighted.”

“You wouldn’t go so far as to lead two such freaks as us around to the stores and help us pick out some New York clothes, would you?” says she.

“My dear girl!” says Sadie, grabbin’ both her hands. “We’ll do it to-morrow.”

“Honest?” says Maizie, beamin’ on her. “Well, that’s what I call right down decent. Phemey, do you hear that? Oh, swallow it, Phemey, swallow it! This is where we bloom out!”

And say, you should have heard them talkin’ over the kind of trousseaus that would best help a girl to forget she ever came from Dobie.

“You will need a neat cloth street dress, for afternoons,” says Sadie.

“Not for me!” says Maizie. “That’ll do all right for Phemey; but when it comes to me, I’ll take something that rustles. I’ve worn back number cast-offs for twenty-two years; now I’m ready for the other kind. I’ve been traveling so far behind the procession I couldn’t tell which way it was going. Now I’m going to give the drum major a view of my back hair. The sort of costumes I want are the kind that are designed this afternoon for day after to-morrow. If it’s checks, I’ll take two to the piece; if it’s stripes, I want to make a circus zebra look like a clipped mule. And I want a change for every day in the week.”

“But, my dear girl,” says Sadie, “can you afford to – ”

“You bet I can!” says Maizie. “My share of Uncle Hen’s pile is forty-five hundred dollars, and while it lasts I’m going to have the lilies of the field looking like the flowers you see on attic wall paper. I don’t care what I have to eat, or where I stay; but when it comes to clothes, show me the limit! But say, I guess it’s time we were getting back to our boarding-house. Wake up, Phemey!”

Well, I pilots ’em out to Fifth-ave., stows ’em into a motor stage, and heads ’em down town.

“Whew!” says Sadie, when I gets back. “I suppose that is a sample of Western breeziness.”

“It’s more’n a sample,” says I. “But I can see her finish, though. Inside of three months all she’ll have left to show for her wad will be a trunk full of fancy regalia and a board bill. Then it will be Maizie hunting a job in some beanery.”

“Oh, I shall talk her out of that nonsense,” says Sadie. “What she ought to do is to take a course in stenography and shorthand.”

Yes, we laid out a full programme for Maizie, and had her earnin’ her little twenty a week, with Phemey keepin’ house for both of ’em in a nice little four-room flat. And in the mornin’ I helps her deposit the certified check, and then turns the pair over to Sadie for an assault on the department stores, with a call at a business college as a finish for the day, as we’d planned.

When I gets home that night I finds Sadie all fagged out and drinkin’ bromo seltzer for a headache.

“What’s wrong?” says I.

“Nothing,” says Sadie; “only I’ve been having the time of my life.”

“Buying tailor made uniforms for the Misses Blickens?” says I.

“Tailor made nothing!” says Sadie. “It was no use, Shorty, I had to give in. Maizie wanted the other things so badly. And then Euphemia declared she must have the same kind. So I spent the whole day fitting them out.”

“Got ’em something sudden and noisy, eh?” says I.

“Just wait until you see them,” says Sadie.

“But what’s the idea?” says I. “How long do they think they can keep up that pace? And when they’ve blown themselves short of breath, what then?”

“Heaven knows!” says Sadie. “But Maizie has plans of her own. When I mentioned the business college, she just laughed, and said if she couldn’t do something better than pound a typewriter, she’d go back to Dobie.”

“Huh!” says I. “Sentiments like that has got lots of folks into trouble.”

“And yet,” says Sadie, “Maizie’s a nice girl in her way. We’ll see how she comes out.”

We did, too. It was a couple of weeks before we heard a word from either of ’em, and then the other day Sadie gets a call over the ’phone from a perfect stranger. She says she’s a Mrs. Herman Zorn, of West End-ave., and that she’s givin’ a little roof garden theater party that evenin’, in honor of Miss Maizie Blickens, an old friend of hers that she used to know when she lived in St. Paul and spent her summers near Dobie. Also she understood we were friends of Miss Blickens too, and she’d be pleased to have us join.

“West End-ave.!” says I. “Gee! but it looks like Maizie had been able to butt in. Do we go, Sadie?”

“I said we’d be charmed,” says she. “I’m dying to see how Maizie will look.”

I didn’t admit it, but I was some curious that way myself; so about eight-fifteen we shows up at the roof garden and has an usher lead us to the bunch. There’s half a dozen of ’em on hand; but the only thing worth lookin’ at was Maizie May.

And say, I thought I could make a guess as to somewhere near how she would frame up. The picture I had in mind was a sort of cross between a Grand-st. Rebecca and an Eighth-ave. Lizzie Maud, – you know, one of the near style girls, that’s got on all the novelties from ten bargain counters. But, gee! The view I gets has me gaspin’. Maizie wa’n’t near; she was two jumps ahead. And it wa’n’t any Grand-st. fashion plate that she was a livin’ model of. It was Fifth-ave. and upper Broadway. Talk about your down-to-the-minute costumes! Say, maybe they’ll be wearin’ dresses like that a year from now. And that hat! It wa’n’t a dream; it was a forecast.

“We saw it unpacked from the Paris case,” whispers Sadie.

All I know about it is that it was the widest, featheriest lid I ever saw in captivity, and it’s balanced on more hair puffs than you could put in a barrel. But what added the swell, artistic touch was the collar. It’s a chin supporter and ear embracer. I thought I’d seen high ones, but this twelve-inch picket fence around Maizie’s neck was the loftiest choker I ever saw anyone survive. To watch her wear it gave you the same sensations as bein’ a witness at a hanging. How she could do it and keep on breathin’, I couldn’t make out; but it don’t seem to interfere with her talkin’.