The Voice at Bogle’s was invisible.  It came from the kitchen, and did not shine in the way of originality.  It was a heathen Voice, and contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the waitresses concerning food.

Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful?  Had she donned a few hundred dollars’ worth of clothes and joined the Easter parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so yourself.

The customers at Bogle’s were her slaves.  Six tables full she could wait upon at once.  They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure.  They who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light of her smiles.  Every man there—­and they were mostly men—­tried to make his impression upon her.

Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at once.  And every smile that she sent forth lodged, like pellets from a scatter-gun, in as many hearts.  And all this while she would be performing astounding feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, ham-and, sausage-and-the-wheats, and any quantity of things on the iron and in the pan and straight up and on the side.  With all this feasting and flirting and merry exchange of wit Bogle’s came mighty near being a salon, with Aileen for its Madame Recamier.

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers.  There was much rivalry among many of the steady customers.  Aileen could have had an engagement every evening.  At least twice a week some one took her to a theatre or to a dance.  One stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened “The Hog” presented her with a turquoise ring.  Another one known as “Freshy,” who rode on the Traction Company’s repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth.  And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a stock broker asked her to go to “Parsifal” with him.

“I don’t know where this place is,” said Aileen while talking it over with Tildy, “but the wedding-ring’s got to be on before I put a stitch into a travelling dress—­ain’t that right?  Well, I guess!”

But, Tildy!

In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented Bogle’s there was almost a heart tragedy.  Tildy with the blunt nose, the hay-coloured hair, the freckled skin, the bag-o’-meal figure, had never had an admirer.  Not a man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the restaurant save now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger for food.  None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of wit.  None of them loudly “jollied” her of mornings as they did Aileen, accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming, of late hours in the company of envied swains.  No one had ever given her a turquoise ring or invited her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant “Parsifal.”