U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [455]
home. Tad had been cal ing up al day. He'd been to the theater and found out that there weren't any rehearsals cal ed. Margo said spiteful y that she had been rehearsing a little specialty and that if any young col egeboy thought he could interfere with her career he had another think coming. The next weekend when he cal ed up she wouldn't see him. But a week later when she came out of her room about two o'clock on Sunday afternoon just in time for Agnes's big Sunday dinner, Tad was sitting there hanging his head, with his hick hands dangling between his knees. On the chair beside him was a green florist's box that she knew when she looked at it was American Beauty roses. He jumped up.
"Oh, Margo . . . don't be sore . . . I just
-262-can't seem to have a good time going around without you."
"I'm not sore, Tad," she said. "I just want everybody to understand that I won't let my life interfere with my work."
"Sure, I get you," said Tad.
Agnes came forward al smiles and put the roses in
water. "Gosh, I forgot," said Tad and pul ed a redleather case out of his pocket. He was stuttering. "You see D-d-dad g-g-gave me some s-s-stocks to play around with an' I made a little kil ing last week and I bought these, only we can't wear them except when we both go out to-gether, can we?" It was a string of pearls, smal and not very wel matched, but pearls al right.
"Who else would take me anyplace where I could wear them, you mut?" said Margo. Margo'felt herself blush-ing. "And they're not Teclas?" Tad shook his head. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Gosh, you honestly like them," said Tad, talking fast.
"Wel , there's one other thing . . . Dad's letting me have the Antoinette, that's his boat, you know, for a two weeks'
cruise this summer with my own crowd. I want you and Mrs. Mandevil e to come. I'd ask Mr. Mandevil e too but . . ."
Mr. Mandevil e too but . . ."
"Nonsense," said Agnes. "I'm sure the party wil be properly chaperoned without me. . . . I'd just get sea-sick. . . . It used to be terrible when poor Fred used to take me out fishing."
"That was my father," said Margo. "He loved being out on the water . . . yachting . . . that kind of thing.
. . . I guess that's why I'm such a good sailor."
"That's great," said Tad.
At that minute Frank Mandevil e came in from his
Sunday walk, dressed in his morningcoat and carrying a silverheaded cane, and Agnes ran into the kitchenette to dish up the roast stuffed veal and vegetables and the straw-263-berrypie from which warm spicy smel s had been seeping through the air of the smal apartment for some time.
"Gosh, I like it here," said Tad, leaning back in his chair after they'd sat down to dinner. The rest of that spring Margo had quite a time keeping Tad and Jerry from bumping into each other. She and Jerry never saw each other at the theater; early in the game she'd told him she had no intention of letting her life interfere with her work and he'd looked sharply at her with his shrewd boiledlooking eyes and said, "Humph
. . . I wish more of our young ladies felt like you do.
. . . I spend most of my time combing them out of my hair."
"Too bad about you," said Margo. "The Valentino of the castingoffice." She liked Jerry Herman wel enough. He was ful of dope about the theater business. The only trouble was that when they got confidential he began mak-ing Margo pay her share of the check at restaurants and showed her pictures of his wife and children in New Rochel e. She worked hard on the Cuban songs, but noth-ing ever came of the specialty. In May the show went on the road. For a long time
she couldn't decide whether to go or not. Queenie Riggs said absolutely not. It was al right for her, who didn't have any ambition any more except to pick her off a travel-ingman in a onehorse town and marry him before he sobered up, but for Margo Dowling who had a career
ahead