"Parsley!" exploded Charlie. "Well, what the----""Well, you see. I'm from the country," explained Mary Louise, "and in the country, at this time of year, when you dry your hair in the back yard, you get the most wonderful scent of green and growing things--not only of flowers, you know, but of the new things just coming up in the vegetable garden, and--and--well, this parsley happens to be the only really gardeny thing I have, so I thought I'd bring it along and sniff it once in a while, andmake believe it's the country, up there on the roof."Half-way up the perilous little flight of stairs that led to the roof, Charlie, the janitor, turned to gaze down at Mary Louise, who was just behind, and keeping fearfully out of the way of Charlie's heels.
"Wimmin," observed Charlie, the janitor, "is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up.""I know it," giggled Mary Louise, and sprang up on the roof, looking, with her towel-swathed head, like a lady Aladdin leaping from her underground grotto.
The two stood there a moment, looking up at the blue sky, and all about at the June sunshine.
"If you go up high enough," observed Mary Louise, "the sunshine is almost the same as it is in the country, isn't it?""I shouldn't wonder," said Charlie, "though Calvary cemetery is about as near's I'll ever get to the country. Say, you can set here on this soap box and let your feet hang down. The last janitor's wife used to hang her washin' up here, I guess. I'll leave this door open, see?""You're so kind," smiled Mary Louise.
"Kin you blame me?" retorted the gallant Charles. And vanished.
Mary Louise, perched on the soap box, unwound her turban, draped the damp towel over her shoulders, and shook out the wet masses of her hair. Now the average girl shaking out the wet masses of her hair looks like a drowned rat. But Nature had been kind to Mary Louise. She had given her hair that curled in little ringlets when wet, and that waved in all the right places when dry.
Just now it hung in damp, shining strands on either side of her face, so that she looked most remarkably like one of those oval-faced, great-eyed, red-lipped women that the old Italian artists were so fond of painting.
Below her, blazing in the sun, lay the great stone and iron city. Mary Louise shook out her hair idly, with one hand, sniffed her parsley, shut her eyes, threw back her head, and began to sing, beating time with her heel against the soap box, and forgetting all about the letter that had come that morning, stating that it was not from any lack of merit, etc. She sang, and sniffed her parsley, and waggled her hair in the breeze, and beat time, idly,with the heel of her little boot, when----"Holy Cats!" exclaimed a man's voice. "What is this, anyway? A Coney Island concession gone wrong?"Mary Louise's eyes unclosed in a flash, and Mary Louise gazed upon an irate-looking, youngish man, who wore shabby slippers, and no collar with a full dress air.
"I presume that you are the janitor's beautiful daughter," growled the collarless man.
"Well, not precisely," answered Mary Louise, sweetly. "Are you the scrub-lady's stalwart son?""Ha!" exploded the man. "But then, all women look alike with their hair down. I ask your pardon, though.""Not at all," replied Mary Louise. "For that matter, all men look like picked chickens with their collars off."At that the collarless man, who until now had been standing on the top step that led up to the roof, came slowly forward, stepped languidly over a skylight or two, draped his handkerchief over a convenient chimney and sat down, hugging his long, lean legs to him.
"Nice up here, isn't it?" he remarked. "It was," said Mary Louise.
"Ha!" exploded he, again. Then, "Where's your mirror?" he demanded. "Mirror?" echoed Mary Louise.
"Certainly. You have the hair, the comb, the attitude, and the general Lorelei effect. Also your singing lured me to your shores.""You didn't look lured," retorted Mary Louise. "You looked lurid." "What's that stuff in your hand?" next demanded he. He really was amost astonishingly rude young man. "Parsley.""Parsley!" shouted he, much as Charlie had done. "Well, what the----" "Back home," elucidated Mary Louise once more, patiently, "afteryou've washed your hair you dry it in the back yard, sitting on the grass, in the sunshine and the breeze. And the garden smells come to you--the nasturtiums, and the pansies, and the geraniums, you know, and even that clean grass smell, and the pungent vegetable odor, and there are ants, andbees, and butterflies----"
"Go on," urged the young man, eagerly.
"And Mrs. Next Door comes out to hang up a few stockings, and a jabot or so, and a couple of baby dresses that she has just rubbed through, and she calls out to you:
"`Washed your hair?'
"`Yes,' you say. `It was something awful, and I wanted it nice for Tuesday night. But I suppose I won't be able to do a thing with it.'
"And then Mrs. Next Door stands there a minute on the clothes-reel platform, with the wind whipping her skirts about her, and the fresh smell of the growing things coming to her. And suddenly she says: `I guess I'll wash mine too, while the baby's asleep.'"The collarless young man rose from his chimney, picked up his handkerchief, and moved to the chimney just next to Mary Louise's soap box.
"Live here?" he asked, in his impolite way.
"If I did not, do you think that I would choose this as the one spot in all New York in which to dry my hair?""When I said, `Live here,' I didn't mean just that. I meant who are you, and why are you here, and where do you come from, and do you sign your real name to your stuff, or use a nom de plume?""Why--how did you know?" gasped Mary Louise.
