Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/72

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Manhattan Transfer

with his hat on his knees and pushed his face forward so that as she played she could see it out of the corner of her eye tilted up towards hers. Madame Rigaud began to sing:

Just a birrd in a geelded cage
A beauteeful sight to see
You'd tink se vas 'appee
And free from all care
Se's not zo se seems to be. . . .

The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.

"Permettez," cried Emile running out.

"Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced," said a little girl with pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:

Tis sad ven you tink of a vasted life
For yout cannot mate vit age
Beautee vas soooold
For an old man's gooold
Se's a birrd in a geelded cage.

Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver up to his mouth. The horses reared and