Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/287

was genuinely merry; almost laughing. "My God, she thinks this is funny!" he told himself.

Mechanically he knelt again, and struck opening chords, while the spectators settled back to listen and the shower of metal slackened, ceased altogether. Hypnotizin' Mama, verse once, chorus once, repeat verse, repeat chorus twice. This was the formula, and he followed it through force of habit . . . then rose, and clasped Yvonne's hand in his damp one, and bowed again . . .

Yvonne was giving him further sibilant directions under cover of the clapping. "Pick up that money, Jock Hamill! You've got to! Doesn't matter what you do with it, but pick it up. And for pity's sake, look pleasant!"

The moments during which he trotted about, scratching silver out of the dust and hearing it patter into the inverted hollow of his banjo were the most ghastly he had ever known, or ever wished to know. He carried with him as he moved a mental cinema of himself—a cinema photographed from Cecily's angle, wherein he appeared the sorriest possible spectacle. He had no idea, of course, that all the women in the room, Cecily included, found him appealing and very lovable in his discomfiture.

When the last dime was lifted he took Yvonne's arm, walked resolutely to the platform with the banjo held straight out before him like a church collection box, and dumped its contents at the feet of Happy Hatton.

Yvonne comprehended in some degree Jock's state of mind that night, but only by intuition, for at the