Chapter 3

Through the perspiration streaming into his eyes, Corcoran was beginning to see things in a blurred vista. Behind the scented lady’s stalled car he saw the red-haired girl climb from the seat of her roadster. The policeman was not so blind that he did not catch a vision of a diminutive foot shod in alligator skin, followed by a brand of shapeliness that would stop any show. Having long studied the contour of her shoulder, Corcoran was not surprised.

Now she had the carry-all at the rear of the roadster open.

“Mooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!”

It was the longest enduring, the most heart-rending, the most bloodcurdling bawl he had ever heard.

“Shut up, ye slab-sided hunk o’ perambulatin’ beefsteak, ye domned——”

A lilting voice interrupted him.

“Why, officer, I’m surprised! The poor thing must be suffering terribly—don’t you know?”

If the big Irishman with his primitive ideas had not already been delivered in chains, the ripple of her voice would have finished him off. He didn’t know. How could he?

“An’ what are ye afther—” Officer Corcoran gulped.

At the moment he wished he were the cow, so that he might have swallowed his cud and begun over again. He remembered that this was not at all what he had intended to say to the red-haired vision.

“What is it the bucket’s for?” he tried again, not bettering his address appreciably.

The red-haired girl was carrying the emergency water pail and a folding camp stool from the roadster.

“Mooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!”

“O-o-o-h, the poor thing! So-o-o, bossy,” she rippled again.

Forthwith she unfolded the canvas camp stool and seated herself beside the bawling animal.

“They must have just taken her calf away,” she said, looking up and favoring Corcoran with his first close-up of a smile that created a vast empty feeling under his buttoned coat.

“I didn’t—did she have one?” he stammered.

Without replying, the girl reached out and under. Her slender fingers gripped and gave a tentative pull here and there.

“Ziss, whung! Ziss, whung! Ziss, whung!”

Two white streams alternately zissed and whunged into the tin pail.

“Moo-oo-oo-oo-oo!”

This time the sound was low and grateful, as the lowing of a contented cow should be.

Corcoran knotted the rope to the post. The lady gear grinder had got her motor started again, but she still sat motionless in perfumed and scornful amazement. Such a thing couldn’t, simply couldn’t, happen!

“Ziss, ziss, ziss, ziss!”

The “whung” from the once empty pail had given way to the steady “ziss” of creamy milk.

Corcoran peremptorily waved the scented lady on her way. She went with eyes sneering. With hands, voice, and whistle Corcoran attacked the jam immediately around him. Blocks away the fire sirens screamed futilely.

“Ziss, ziss, ziss, ziss!”

A burly, red-faced chauffeur stalled his car purposely and leaned out. He laughed with ribald inflection. Following his eyes, Corcoran noticed that the girl’s skimpy silken skirt was proving inadequate. A gleam, white as the creamy milk zissing into the pail, fogged his vision.

Instantly he was beside the halted car.

“Git movin’!” was all he said.

The omitted curse was in his eyes. They blazed first degree murder at the arrant chauffeur.

“Whaffor? A show’s a show, ain’t it?”

Corcoran’s big hand gripped the chauffeur’s shoulder. His great thumb pressed deep into the man’s armpit. With his other hand he fished a ticket from his pocket.

“Ziss, Ziss, ziss, ziss!”

The chauffeur squirmed painfully.

“Aw, lay off o’ me! What’s the big idea?”

Corcoran released him and scribbled on the ticket.

“Blockin’ traffic,” he intoned, and paused. “Drivin’ to the common danger—resistin’ an officer,” he chanted on, still scribbling. “Street mashin’—insultin’ a lady.” He handed the ticket to the chauffeur. “I’ll think of somethin’ else to charge ye with in court,” he added.

The offender snatched the ticket and stepped on the gas.

“Ziss, Ziss, ziss, ziss!”

The pail was half full. East and west, north and south, Officer Corcoran autocratically restored the traffic. With a final scream the fire sirens had given it up and taken another route.

“Ziss, ziss, ziss, ziss!”

The golden red aureole of the girl’s hair contrasted warmly with the lighter yellow of the cow’s flank. For a fleeting moment Officer Corcoran devoutly wished that his shoulder was the cow’s hip.

At length she straightened her back and rose. The pail was two-thirds full of foamy milk.

“Moo-oo-oo!” mooed the cow in low-voiced appreciation.

The eyes of liquid brown looked into the puzzled eyes of blue. A merry light appeared in the brown ones, a dawn of happy understanding came into the blue ones.

Through the east and west traffic there blundered a set of ragged chin whiskers.

“Wall, I’ll swan to gosh—who’d ever ’a’ thunk it?” drawled a nasal voice through the whiskers. The man untied the cow and was starting to lead her away. He thought of something. “Ye kin keep the milk,” he added generously.

“Oh, thank you!” the girl replied sweetly.

Through the north and south traffic Corcoran’s relief came pushing his way. Corcoran saw him; then he looked back to the girl, who held out the pail.

“You may carry it,” her voice rippled again; “and I guess you may see me home.”

Ten minutes later the silky roadster stopped before a tiny, old-fashioned house set back in an equally old-fashioned garden. Corcoran, his arm numb from balancing the pail, got out and stood stiffly.

“You see, we only moved here from the country last fall,” said the girl. “That’s how I knew—” A real, honest-to-goodness blush warmed the translucent skin of her cheeks. “And—oh, I’m so tired of the city!” She wore the wistful four-o’clock smile. “I want to go back to the country. I wouldn’t have stayed, I guess, but I won the car in a drawing, and—but won’t you come in, and we’ll have some of the cream on strawberries from the garden?”

Swinging the pail, from which not one precious drop had been spilled, Officer James Emmet Corcoran went up the walk behind the golden red bob. His primitive ideas about social distinctions were smashed forever.