The Gate Crasher

I had noticed a number of little rooms leading off from the ballroom and I stole into one of these, sat down on a sofa and took off my shoes.

I smoked a cigaret or two and was feeling much easier, when suddenly I heard some one coming. It was an embarrassing position to be caught in. I barely had time to thrust my stockinged feet back into the damnable oxfords without lacing them when a girl in green came in and looked around as though she were trying to locate some one. Her dress began in a long, narrow velvet bodice and ended in a cluster of ostrich feathers around the knees. She held a wide fan of curling ostrich feathers in one hand. She was the cutest thing I had seen there that night and I began to wonder who she was.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for my brother. He hasn’t been in here by any chance, has he?”

“No,” I smiled. “Won’t I do instead?”

She laughed. “I’m afraid not. You see he has my powder compact in his pocket and he’s gone off with it. What’s to become of my poor nose?”

“I’m afraid they’ve neglected to introduce us,” I said, becoming more sure of myself. “If I may, my name is Ted Lawton.”

“I’m Joyce Nichols,” she answered unassumingly.

I nearly fell over when I heard that. Here she was at last, the very girl I had read about so often in the society columns. It all came back to me.

Her name was always mentioned among those present. Joyce Nichols did this and Joyce Nichols did that, Joyce Nichols went here and Joyce Nichols went there. I never dreamed the day would come that I’d meet her face to face.

Somehow my feet didn’t hurt any more, or if they did I didn’t seem to mind it as much as before. When the music started again I asked her to let me see her dance card, and when she showed it to me I crossed off two or three of the fellows’ names right before her eyes. She only laughed. “They’ll cut in anyway,” she warned me. But I didn’t let them. I kept my back turned when they tried to bow, and slipped away when they touched me on the shoulder. Joyce laughed and encouraged me to keep it up. “Look out, here comes another one,” she would whisper. “Let’s pretend we don’t see him. He’s an awful grasshopper.”

She liked my dancing, and she herself danced better than any girl I had ever met before. “You’ll spoil me for all the rest of my life,” she said. “I won’t want to dance with any of the rest of the boys after I’ve danced with you.”

It seemed like an invitation to get to know her better, so afterward we went back to the little room where we had first met and sat down on a cozy lounge they had in there.

“It’s nice to be alone like this,” Joyce sighed comfortably. I turned out the lights and put my arm around her, and we stayed in there for quite a while, until it was time for her brother to call for her and take her away. They were going to another dance from there, I learned to my surprise. Outside she turned to me while her brother held a beautiful fringed shawl for her.

“Are you going to be at the charity affair next Tuesday?” she wanted to know.

I knew she had mistaken me for one of her own set and thought I went around to all of these gaieties as nonchalantly as the rest of them did. How could I tell her the truth?

“Are you?” I countered.

“Surest thing you know,” she replied briskly.

“Then I am, too,” I answered; and I meant it. I was going to be there or know the reason why.

She wrapped herself in her black shawl embroidered with red poppies and held oat the tips of her fingers to me.

“Bye bye,” she said cozily, “don’t forget Tuesday.”

So around midnight Tuesday behold me decked out as never before, having spent all evening (not to mention two dollars and eighty cents) at the barber shop getting a hair-cut, singe, hot and cold towels and even a facial pack.

But if it had been hard to get in at the Versailles, it was utterly impossible to get in at the Park Venice. I found that out almost at once. The affair was on the roof. I went up thirty-three floors in one of their enameled elevators, and the minute I stepped out of it a member of the entertainment committee thrust his hand out at me and said “Tickets please?” in a very bored voice.

“I... I’ve mislaid it,” I groaned, fumbling through my pockets.

“I have a few left.” he said. “How many do you need? I might be able to help you out.”

It sounded almost too good to be true.

“One will do,” I explained.

“That’ll be sixty-five dollars,” he answered affably.

“Going down!” I said to the elevator boy.

The next time I went up I got off at the thirty-second floor, went up a delivery staircase and came out before a kitchen door.