To lose time was displeasing to
Mademoiselle. Here was the candy man--no fit game for her darts,
truly--but of the sex upon which she had been born to make war.
After casting upon him looks of unseeing coldness for a dozen times,
one afternoon she suddenly thawed and poured down upon him a smile
that put to shame the sweets upon his cart.
"Candy man," she said, cooingly, while Sidonie followed her impulsive
dive, brushing the heavy auburn hair, "don't you think I am
beautiful?"
The candy man laughed harshly, and looked up, with his thin jaw set,
while he wiped his forehead with a red-and-blue handkerchief.
"Yer'd make a dandy magazine cover," he said, grudgingly. "Beautiful
or not is for them that cares. It's not my line. If yer lookin' for
bouquets apply elsewhere between nine and twelve. I think we'll have
rain."
Truly, fascinating a candy man is like killing rabbits in a deep
snow; but the hunter's blood is widely diffused. Mademoiselle tugged
a great coil of hair from Sidonie's hands and let it fall out the
window.
"Candy man, have you a sweetheart anywhere with hair as long and soft
as that? And with an arm so round?" She flexed an arm like Galatea's
after the miracle across the window-sill.
The candy man cackled shrilly as he arranged a stock of butter-scotch
that had tumbled down.
"Smoke up!" said he, vulgarly. "Nothin' doin' in the complimentary
line. I'm too wise to be bamboozled by a switch of hair and a newly
massaged arm.
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