"Hurry along there with fifty-seven, Delehanty! Heyman's got to see the
line and catch that six-two Chicago flier."
Miss Delehanty fell into pose, her profile turned back over one
shoulder.
"Tell him to chew a clove; it's good for breathless haste," she said,
disappearing through portieres into the show-room.
Miss Becker thrust herself from a hastily-found-out aperture, patting,
with final touch, her belt into place.
"Have I been asking you for five years, Kess, to knock before you poke
your head in on us girls?"
Mr. Leon Kessler appeared then fully between the curtains, letting them
drape heavily behind him. Gotham garbs her poets and her brokers, her
employers and employees, in the national pin-stripes and sack coat.
Except for a few pins stuck upright in his coat lapel, Mr. Kessler might
have been his banker or his salesman. Typical New-Yorker is the pseudo,
half enviously bestowed upon his kind by _hinter_ America. It signifies
a bi-weekly manicure, femininely administered; a hotel lobbyist who can
outstare a seatless guest; the sang-froid to add up a dinner check;
spats. When Mr. Kessler tipped, it did not clink; it rustled. In
theater, at each interval between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees
and returned chewing a mint.
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