where the bucks of the town loafed and drawled in lazy alert groups. It was their club, their brasserie, the forum of the sexes. With confident smiles the young men detached themselves from their group and strolled back to booth and table.
“Hey theah! Wheahd you come from?”
“Move ovah theah, lady. I want to tawk to you.”
Eyes as blue as Southern skies looked roguishly up to laughing gray ones, the winsome dimples deepened, and the sweetest little tail in dear old Dixie slid gently over on the polished board.
Gant spent delightful hours now in the gossip of dirty old men— their huddled bawdry exploded in cracked high wheezes on the Square. He came home at evening stored with gutter tidings, wetting his thumb and smiling slyly as he questioned Helen hopefully:
“She’s no better than a regular little chippie—eh?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” she laughed mockingly. “Don’t you wish you knew?”
His age bore certain fruits, emoluments of service. When she came home in the evening with one of her friends, she presented the girl with jocose eagerness to his embrace. And, crying out paternally, “Why, bless her heart! Come kiss the old man,” he planted bristling mustache kisses on their white throats, their soft lips, grasping the firm meat of one arm tenderly with his good hand and cradling them gently. They shrieked with throaty giggle-twiddles of pleasure because it tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-TICKLED so.
“Ooh! Mr. Gant! Whah-whah-whah!”
“Your father’s such a nice man,” they said. “Such lovely manners.”
Helen’s eyes fed fiercely on them. She laughed with husky-harsh excitement.
“Hah-ha-ha! He likes that, doesn’t he? It’s too bad, old boy, isn’t it? No more monkey business.”
He talked with Jannadeau, while his fugitive eyes roved over the east end of the Square. Before the shop the comely matrons of the town came up from the market. From time to time they smiled, seeing him, and he bowed sweepingly. Such lovely manners.
