The devices of vaudeville are perennial. Rigoletto, who set a court's
sides aching, danced to bells. The row of twenty-four, pink and white as
if the cradle had just yielded them up, shivered suddenly into an
ecstasy of sound, the jerked-up shoulder of one, the tossing curls of
another, the naughty shrug of a third, eking out a melody.
A laugh rose off the crowd.
"Say, this town'll fall for anything! That act's got barnacles. But the
little devils look cute, though. Say--say, old man, cut that out! This
is no place for your mother's son. Say!"
Mr. Loeb was leaning forward across the table, his head well ahead of
his shoulders. From the third from the end of the row of twenty-four, a
shoulder shrugging to the musical nonsense of bells was arching none too
indirectly toward him, and once the black curls bobbed, giving a share
of tremolo to the melody. But the bob was carefully directed, and Herman
Loeb returned it in fashion, only more vehemently and with repetition.
"Say, Herman, enough is enough! You'll have her here at the table next.
It's like Al Suss always says, the reason he woke up one morning and
found himself married to the first pony in the sextet was because he
stuck a stamp upside down on a letter to her and found he could be held
for a proposal in stamp language.
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