O. Henry

                    The Brief Debut of Tildy

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your 
loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively 
you should be interested to know how the other half consumes 
provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are 
things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your 
money's worth - in quantity, at least.
   Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that boulevard 
of Brown Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of 
tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a castor-stand, 
containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you 
may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic 
dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should 
extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid tarnip, yet will his 
prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. 
Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made 
`from the recipe of a nobleman in India.'
   At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, 
and takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks he makes your 
change, files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about 
the weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement 
you would better not ventare. You are not Bogle's friend; you are a 
fed, transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the 
blowing of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go - to the 
devil if you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments.
   The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and 
a Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen. She was tall, 
beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? 
There was no more necessity for another name at Bogle's than there was 
for finger-bowls.
   The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest 
Matilda? Please listen this time - Tildy - Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, 
plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last 
clause to yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the 
duplicate infinite.
   The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen , and 
did not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen Voice, and 
contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the 
waitresses concerning food.
   Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had 
she donned a few hundred dollars' worth of clothes and joined the 
Easter parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so 
yourself.
   The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could 
wait upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their 
impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, 
graceful figure. They who had finished eating ate more that they might 
continue in the light of her smiles. Every man there - and they were 
mostly men - tried to make his impression upon her.
   Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at 
once. And every smile that she sent forth lodged, like pellets from a 
scatter-gun, in as many hearts. And all this while she would be 
performing astounding feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, 
ham-and, sausage-and-the-wheats, and any quantity of things on the 
iron and in the pan and straight up and on the side. With all this 
feasting and flirting and merry exchange of wit Bogle's came mighty 
near being a salon, with Aileen for its Madame Recamier.
   If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the 
regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the 
steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. 
At least twice a week someone took her to a theatre or to a dance. One 
stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened `The Hog' 
presented her with a turquoise ring. Another. one known as `Freshy,' 
who rode on the Traction Company's repair wagon, was going to give her 
a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth. 
And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a 
stockbroker asked her to go to `Parsifal' with him.
   `I don't know where this place is,' said Aileen while talking it 
over with Tildy, `but the wedding-ring's got to be on before I put a 
stitch into a travelling dress - ain't that right? Well, I gaess!'      
   But, Tildy!
   In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented Bogle's there was alinost 
a heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose, the haycoloured hair, the 
freckled skin the bag-o'-meal figure. had never had an admirer. Not a 
man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the 
restaurant save now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger 
for food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges 
of wit. None of them loudly `jollied' her of mornings as they did 
Aileen, accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming, of late hours 
in the company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise 
ring or invited her upon a voyage to mysterious distant `Parsifal.'
   Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat 
at her tables spoke to her briefly with quotations from the bill of 
fare; and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwiseflavoured 
accents, eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in 
their chairs to gaze aronnd and over the impending form of Tildy, that 
Aileen's pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their bacon and 
eggs.
   And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could 
receive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the 
short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and she was glad to see her 
rule hearts and wean the attention of men firom smoking pot-pie and 
lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-coloured hair the 
unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but 
coming to us alone.
   There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly 
bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was alxnost enough to heal any 
optic.
   `Fresh guy,' explained Aileen, `last night as I was going home at 
Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break. I 
turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to 
Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a good 
one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look real 
awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he 
comes in for his tea and toast at ten.'
   Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No 'man 
had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the 
twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one 
and black one's eye for love!
   Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who 
worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, 
and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was 
too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one 
of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled 
weakfish.
   One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking 
beer. There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When 
Mr. Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around 
Tildy s waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the 
street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied 
himself to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade.
   For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of 
Aileen shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying:
   `Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss 
Slyboots! First thing I know you'll be stealing some of my fellows. I 
must keep an eye on you, my lady.'
   Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she 
had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the 
potent Aileen. She herself was now a mancharmer, a mark for Cupid, a 
Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. 
Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden 
and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous 
piece of one-day laundry-work. He had taken the sackcloth of her 
uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned 
it to her sheer embroidered lawn - the robe of Venus herself.
   The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both 
Circe and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen 
herself had been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant.
   Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack 
she went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried 
not to let her words sound proud and boastful.
   `A gentleman insulted me to-day,' she said. `He hugged me around 
the waist and kissed me.'
   `That so?' said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. `After 
this week you get a dollar a week more.'
   At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with 
whom she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one 
whose merit needed no'bolstering:
   `A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arm 
around my waist and kissed me.'
   The diners accepted the revelation in various ways - some 
incredulously, some with congratulations; others turned upon her the 
stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. 
And Tildy's heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers 
of Romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which she had 
for so long travelled.
   For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy 
established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons, 
and arranged her hair like Aileen's, and tightened her waist two 
inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders would 
rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have loved her 
desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly jealous.
   Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy 
rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal 
to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend.
   At four o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came 
in. There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the 
restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was 
quartering pies Mr. Seeders walked back to where they stood.
Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon 
upon her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore
Venus's Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging 
silver symbolic heart.
   Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into 
his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.
   `Miss Tildy,' said he, `I want to apologize for what I done the 
other evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I 
wouldn't of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that a-way when I was 
sober. So I hope, Miss Tildy, you'll accept my "pology, and believe 
that I wouldn't of done it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't of 
been drunk.'
   With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed, 
feeling that reparation had been made.
   But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon 
a table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing 
her heart out - out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel 
they with blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had 
torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised 
utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic 
prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in 
fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unxneant; the court had 
not stirred at the false alarm; she must for evermore remain the 
Sleeping Beauty.
   Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red 
hand groped among the butter chips till it found the warm grasp of her 
friend's.
   `Don't you fret, Til,' said Aileen, who did not understand 
entirely. `That turnip-faced little clothes-pin of a Seeders ain't 
worth it. He ain't anything of a gentleman or he wouldn't ever of 
apologized.'