BUtterfield 8 Read Online Free Page B

that will be changed. I guess you know who made the loudest noise in Union Square the day before yesterday.”
    “I guess I do,” said Isabel.
    “I don’t think I like your tone. Somehow, I don’t quite like your tone,” but he began to whistle and she began to sing: “Take me back to Man-hattan, that dear-old, dirty, town.”
    At Madison Avenue they were almost struck by a huge Paramount taxi, and when Jimmy swore at the driver, the driver said, “Go on, I’ll spit in your eye.” And both Isabel and Jimmy distinctly heard the lone passenger, a girl in a fur coat, call to the driver: “Go on, spit in their eye.” The cab beat the light and sped south in Madison.
    “Nice girl,” said Isabel. “Did you know her?”
    “How would I know her? She’s someone from this neighborhood obviously. Downtown we don’t talk that way, not in the village.”
    “No, of course not, except I could point out that the taxi is on its way downtown, in a hurry.”
    “All right, point it out. And then for a disagreeable couple I give you the man and woman in the elevator. Mr. Princeton with the glasses and his wife. I’ll bet they’re battling right this minute in that beautiful big chariot. I’d rather know a girl that yells out of a taxi, ‘Spit in their eye,’ than two polite people that can’t wait to be alone before they’re at each other’s throats.”
    “Well, that’s the difference between you and me. I’d rather live in this part of town, where the people at least—”
    “I didn’t say anything about living with them, or having them for neighbors. All I said was I’d rather know that kind of girl—that girl—than those people. That’s all I said.”
    “Still stick to my statement. I’d rather
know
the man and his wife. As a matter of fact I happen to know who they are. He’s an architect.”
    “And I don’t really give a damn who they are, but I do give a damn who the girl is.”
    “A girl who would wear a mink coat on a day like this. She’s cheap.”
    “Well, with a mink coat she must have come high at some time.”
    He was silent a few seconds before continuing. “You know what I’m thinking, don’t you? No, you don’t. But I’d like to say it if you’d promise not to get sore? . . . I was just thinking what a powerful sexual attraction there is between us, otherwise why do we go on seeing each other when we quarrel so much?”
    “We only quarrel, if you’ll look back on it, we only quarrel for one reason, really, and that’s the way you talk to me.”
    He said nothing, and they walked on in silence for several blocks.
     • • • 
    When Sunday morning came Paul Farley never liked to be alone with his wife, nor did Nancy Farley like to be alone with Paul. The Farleys were Roman Catholic, although when they were married, in the fourth summer after the war, you would not have been able to guess from their dossiers in the newspapers, without looking at their names, that the wedding was taking place in the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer. Of Paul it was said: “He attended Lawrenceville School and Princeton and served overseas as second lieutenant in a machine gun company of the 27th Division. He is a member of the Association of Ex-Members of Squadron A, the Princeton Club and the Racquet and Tennis Club.” Of Nancy it said: “Miss McBride, who is a member of the Junior League, attended the Brearley School and Westover, and she was introduced to society last season at a dance at the Colony Club and later at the Bachelors’ Cotillon in Baltimore, Md.”
    After their marriage they had children, three of them, rapid-fire; but when the third, a girl, died, Nancy, who had wanted a girl very much, came to a decision. It was a major adjustment in her life. Up to that time Nancy had been a girl who always did what people told her to do. A succession of people: her mother, to a lesser degree her father, a nurse, a governess, her teachers, and the Church. The odor of sanctity was faint but