While indulging in a little airy persiflage the girls had
a great little trick of pursing their mouths into rosebud shapes
over their soda straws, and casting their eyes upward at Eddie.
They all knew the trick, and its value, so that at night Eddie's
dreams were haunted by whole rows of rosily pursed lips, and seas
of upturned, adoring eyes. Of course we all noticed that on those
rare occasions when Josie Morehouse came into Kunz's her glass was
heaped higher with ice cream than that of any of the other girls,
and that Eddie's usually easy flow of talk was interspersed with
certain stammerings and stutterings. But Josie didn't come in
often. She had a lot of dignity for a girl of eighteen. Besides,
she was taking the teachers' examinations that summer, when the
other girls were playing tennis and drinking sodas.
Eddie really hated the soda water end of the business, as
every soda clerk in the world does. But he went about it
good-naturedly. He really wanted to learn the drug business, but
the boss knew he had a drawing card, and insisted that Eddie go
right on concocting faerie queens and strawberry sundaes, and
nectars and Kunz's specials. One Saturday, when he happened to
have on hand an over-supply of bananas that would have spoiled over
Sunday, he invented a mess and called it the Eddie Extra, and the
girls swarmed on it like flies around a honey pot.
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