Odd Numbers. Ford Sewell

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’.

      Sittin’ close up beside her, and listenin’ with both ears stretched and his mouth open, was a blond young gent with a bristly Bat Nelson pompadour. He’s rigged out in a silk faced tuxedo, a smoke colored, open face vest, and he has a big yellow orchid in his buttonhole. By the way he’s gazin’ at Maizie, you could tell he approved of her from the ground up. She don’t hesitate any on droppin’ him, though, when we arrives.

      “Hello!” says she. “Ripping good of you to come. Well, what do you think? I’ve got some of ’em on, you see. What’s the effect?”

      “Stunning!” says Sadie.

      “Thanks,” says Maizie. “I laid out to get somewhere near that. And, gosh! but it feels good! These are the kind of togs I was born to wear. Phemey? Oh, she’s laid up with arnica bandages around her throat. I told her she mustn’t try to chew gum with one of these collars on.”

      “Say, Maizie,” says I, “who’s the Sir Lionel Budweiser, and where did you pick him up?”

      “Oh, Oscar!” says she. “Why, he found me. He’s from St. Paul, nephew of Mrs. Zorn, who’s visiting her. Brewer’s son, you know. Money? They’ve got bales of it. Hey, Oscar!” says she, snappin’ her finger. “Come over here and show yourself!”

      And say, he was trained, all right. He trots right over.

      “Would you take him, if you was me?” says Maizie, turnin’ him round for us to make an inspection. “I told him I wouldn’t say positive until I had shown him to you, Mrs. McCabe. He’s a little under height, and I don’t like the way his hair grows; but his habits are good, and his allowance is thirty thousand a year. How about him? Will he do?”

      “Why—why——” says Sadie, and it’s one of the few times I ever saw her rattled.

      “Just flash that ring again, Oscar,” says Maizie.

      “O-o-oh!” says Sadie, when Oscar has pulled out the white satin box and snapped back the cover. “What a beauty! Yes, Maizie, I should say that, if you like Oscar, he would do nicely.”

      “That goes!” says Maizie. “Here, Occie dear, slide it on. But remember: Phemey has got to live