Ptomaine Street: The Tale of Warble Petticoat. Wells Carolyn
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that he was about to put his foot in it. Yet he did.
“May I see you again sometime?” he said, ignoring the hat-check girl’s ogling and the iceman’s cold stare.
Warble made a face at him. It was one of her ways.
“What’s your address?” he asked. “You can ask the Boss—if you really want to know.”
“Want to know! Say, you waitress!”
Of the love-making of Warble and Big Bill Petticoat there is nothing to be reported which may not be read in any Satevepost serial, which may not be heard at any summer resort, in any winter garden. They were zoology and history. Their speech was free silver and their silence was golden.
It was a non-stop courtship. All the plump beauty of youth and all the assured complacence of a well-to-do married man kept them up in the air.
Petticoat wasn’t a married man, but he had their technique.
They took a walk, and followed a roundabout way. Then they sat on a bank, and his arm followed a roundabout way.
She seemed more young and tender than ever, in a simple white muslin frock and blue sash. Her broad-leafed hat was decked with a few pink roses, and roll-top white socks added a good deal to the picture.
Petticoat was charmed.
“Golly, but I love you, Warble!” he cried.
She did not answer, but she touched the upper edge of the wallet in his breast pocket with an exploring gesture.
“You think I’m too darn aesthetic! Well, you’re not, and so we ought to mate. We’re complementary to one another, like air and sunshine or light and shade.”
“Or pork and beans, or pie and cheese.”
“Yes, or like stout and porter—I’ll be the porter, oh—what’s the use of talking? Let my lips talk to you!”
He kissed her cheek, imprinting thereon a Cupid’s bow, by reason of his own addiction to the lipstick.
Warble rubbed it off with the back of her hand, and said, “Oh, pleathe—pleathe.”
She wondered if she ought to have said thank you, but it was only a drifting thought and she turned the other cheek. Then she smiled her engaging smile and they were engaged.
Later in the game, she said, with pretty diffidence, “I would like to thee Butterfly Thenter.” And she blushed like the inside of those pink meat melons.
“I knew it!” and Petticoat produced a pile of Sunday Picture Supplements.
Her cheek nested in his permanent wave, Warble studied the pictures.
They were the last word in artistic architecture. Truly, Butterfly Center, where Petticoat lived, was a veritable Utopia, Arcadia, Spotless Town and Happy Valley all rolled into one. Broad streets, arching trees, sublimated houses, glorified shops—it seemed to Warble like a flitter-work Christmas card from the drug-store.
“How’d you like to scoot up there with me in a fast aeroplane?” he jollied her.
“It might be—a lark—” she dubioused.
“But here’s the picture!” and proudly he exhibited a full length view of his own home.
“Ptomaine Haul,” he exploited, proudly. “Built every inch of it from the busy little ptomaines. Coral insects nothing on that, eh? And here’s the sort of people I practice on. Old Leathersham, now—he has a corking château—French Renaissance. And Mrs. Charity Givens—she has a Georgian shack. And, oh, yes, here’s Iva Payne. She’s one of my most profitable patients—sick all the time.”
Warble studied the pictures.
“What expensive people,” she said, “dear—so dear.”
“Yes, great people. You’d love ‘em. They’re just layin’ for you. Come on, Warble, will you?”
“Yop,” she murmured, from his coat pocket, “Sweet, so sweet.”
CHAPTER III
Among the rolling stock of a great railroad, a moving mass of steel. A soft sludge as it came noiselessly to rest beneath the glazed chintz awnings of the Butterfly Center station.
A faint scent of chypre from Petticoat’s cigarette as he alit.
From his private train, which had slithered across the intervening spaces and slid into its moorings as butter slides from a hot plate.
It is September, cool, green and well-sprinkled.
The obviously important man was followed by a yellow-topped, rose-cheeked girl, whose eyes were all blue and a yard wide as she looked about.
About what?
About eighteen.
They were Dr. Big Bill Petticoat and his bride, Warble.
They had been married and had spent their honeymoon in riotous loving.
It had been transforming. Warble had been frightened to discover how hungry she could be even on a wedding trip.
Bill had mused to himself; what’s the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? One honeymoon. And now they had reached their home town. People were not altogether new to Warble. She had seen them before. But these were her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn—and, they didn’t seem to need it.
They distressed her. They were so smart. She had always held that there is no style in America, no chic effects out of Paris.
But here on the terrace of the simple little hewn stone station were hordes of men and women who seemed to be, mentally, morally and physically, literally butterflies.
“Isn’t there any way of waking them up?” she begged of Petticoat, grabbing his arm and shaking him.
“These guys? Wake ‘em up? What for? They’re happy.”
“But they’re so smug—no, that isn’t what I mean. They’re so stick-in-the-mud.”
“Look here, Warble, you want to get over your fool idea that because a woman is slender she isn’t adorable. These folks are up to date, snuff and mischief.”
“I know, that’s what’s biting me. Life seems so hard for them.”
“Oh, they don’t mind it. Now you must meet the bunch. They’re all down here to meet their husbands or something just as good. Now you behave yourself.”
“Yop.”
She had a grip on herself. She was ready to kiss and be friends with them all. But she was scared at the rackety pack who ballyhooed like Coney Island and surged down upon her like a Niagara Falls.
She had the impression that all the men had soft voices, large, embracing arms, gimlet eyes and bored, impersonal smiles. She knew they were taking her in. Their pleasant hoots and yells of greeting overcame her.
“Oh, pleathe—pleathe,” she lisped.
In her fresh frilled dimity and soft sash of baby-blue Surah, her rolled white socks disclosing but a few tantalizing inches of seashell-pink calf, Warble stood, eyes cast down, a pretty, foolish thing,
As soft as young,
As gay as soft,
and, to a man, the male population of Butterfly Center fell for her.
Not so the remainder of the citizens.
One of the men was yelling at Petticoat:
“Hop into my car, Bill, Don’t see yours—I’ll tote the bride-person you’ve got there—with joy and gladness.” Warble looked at the yeller.
“Can’t quite place me, chick, can you?” he grinned at her. “Well I’m only old Goldwin Leathersham—no use for me in the world but to spend money. Want me to spend some on you? Here’s my old thing—step up here, Marigold, and be introduced. She’s really nicer than she looks, Mrs. Petticoat.”
“Indeed