The Coming-Out of Maggie by O Henry

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety. The Coming Out of Maggie by O Henry. Every Saturday night, the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the give and take athletic association on the east side. In order to attend one of these dances, you must be a member of the give and take, or if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in Watson, you must work in Rangels Paper Box Factory.

Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly, each give and take brought the paper box girls that he affected and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops. Maggie Tull, on account of her dull eyes, Broadmount, and left-handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCartney and her fellow. Anna and Maggie.

They worked side by side in the factory and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns, take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them. The give and take athletic association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard Street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions.

With the fibres thus build it up by the members were want to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations, the Saturday night hop with the paper box factory girls. It came as a refining influence and as an efficient scream. For sometimes the tip went round and if you were amongst the elect that tip towed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little well-to-weight affair to finish as ever happened inside the ropes.

On Saturdays, Ryan Gold's paper box factory closed at 3pm. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked home with together. At Maggie's door Anna said as usual, be ready at 7 sharp mag and Jimmy and me will come by for you. But what was this?

Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks for the non-ascorted one, there was to be perceived a high poised head, a prideful dimpling of the corners of a broad mouth and a sparkle in a dull brown eye. "Thanks Anna," said Maggie, "but you and Jimmy needn't bother tonight. Either gentleman friend that's coming round to escort me to the hop." The cumley Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chide and besieged her.

Maggie tore catch a fellow, plain, dear loyal and attractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in a little park. How was it? "When did it happen? Who was it?"

"You'll see tonight," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grape she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. He swelal ripe, he's two inches taller than Jimmy and an up to date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall. Anna and Jimmy were amongst the first clover leaves to arrive that evening.

Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend's catch. At 830, Miss Tull swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly, her triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy. "Oh gee," cried Anna.

"Mag ain't made of here, oh no, swell fellow, well I guess, style, look at him." "Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with a sandpaper in his voice. "Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push.

Don't mind me, he don't squeeze all the lines, I guess, huh?" "Shut up, Jimmy, you know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow she's ever had, oh here they come."

Across the floor, Maggie sailed, like a cut of hiss she opt conveyed with a stately cruiser. And truly. Her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average given take athlete.

His dark hair curled, his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smile. The young men of the Cloverleaf Club pined not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess. Its achievements in hand to hand conflicts. And its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it.

The member of the association who would bind a paper box made into his concrete chariot, scorned to employ, but your brimble ears. They were not considered honorable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction, of the supermenence of the male in his cosmonogenic of creation. Even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle turnies of cupid.

These were the approved arms and ammunition of the Cloverleaf Gallant. They viewed, then, genuine flexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle. A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O. Sullivan, was Maggie's formula of introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each new arriving Cloverleaf.

Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse. Maggie O. Tools got a new fellow at last, was the word that went around among the paper box girls. Pipe Mags floor walker, thus the given takes express their indifferent contempt. Usually, at the weekly hops, Maggie Ketter spot on the wall, warm with her back.

Maggie felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna, joggle, the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her, to walk over his feet through a two-step. But tonight, the pumpkin had turned to a coach in six. Terry O. Sullivan was a victorious princess charming, and Maggie tool winged her first butterfly flight.

And through our tropes of fairy-lamby mixed with those of entomology, they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night. The girls besieged her for introductions to her fellow. The clover leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in mistool. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance.

Thus she scorned. But Terry O. Sullivan, the honours of the evening felt thick and fast. He shook his curls. He smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open window, ten minutes each day.

He danced like a form. He introduced man at the style and atmosphere. His words came trippingly upon his tongue, and he waltzed twice in succession with the paper box-girl that Dempsey Donovan brought. Dempsey was the leader of the association.

He wore a dress suit and could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of Big Michael Sullivan's lieutenants and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever he broke a push-cart man's head or shot a member of the Hendrix B.S. Weeny Outing and literary association in the kneecap, an officer would drop round and say, "The gentleman would like to see you in a few minutes round the office if you don't mind my boy."

But there would be sundry gentlemen there, with large gold fob chains and black cigars, and somebody would tell a funny story, and Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound dumbbells. So doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe performance, compared with a waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper box-girl. At ten o'clock, the jolly round face of Big Michael Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys.

Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. Big Mike looked carefully at the dances, smiled, shook his head and departed. The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls.

Terry O. Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner, and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey insetected him in the middle of the floor. Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us, caused nearly everyone now to turn and look at them. There was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena.

Two or three given takes with tight-coach-sleeved true nira. One moment, Mr. Sullivan said Dempsey, "I hope you're enjoying yourself. Where did you say you live?" The two gladiators were well-matched.

Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight to give away. The O. Sullivan had dretz with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a bells and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his conspicuous near.

They were enemies by the law-written when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide pre-eminence. Only one must survive. "I live on grand," said Sullivan, insolently, "and no trouble to find me at home.

Where do you live?" Dempsey ignored the question. "You say your name's O. Sullivan," he went on. "Well," Big Mike says, "he's never saw you before."

"Lots of things he's never saw," said the favourite of the hop. "As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O. Sullivan's in this district, no one another." "You escorted one of our lady-members here, and we want a chance to make good." "If you've got a family tree, let's see a few historical O. Sullivan birds come out on it.

Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?" Suppose you mind your own business, suggested O. Sullivan, blindly. Dempsey's eyes brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant idea hitched a rocket.

"I've got it now," he said cordially. "It was just a little mistake. You ain't no O. Sullivan. You're a rin-tailed monkey.

Excuse us for not recognising you at first." O. Sullivan's eyes flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Georgian was ready and caught his arm. Dempsey nodded at Andy, and William McMahann, the secretary of the club, and walked rapidly towards a door at the rear of the hall.

Two other members of the give-and-take association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O. Sullivan was now in the hands of the board of the rules of the social referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear. The movement on the part of the clover leaf members requires a word of elacidation.

The lack of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room, personal difficulties that arose on the boardroom floor were settled, mount a man, with the weapons of nature, under the supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at the clover leaf hop in several years. Each gentleman members guaranteed that.

So easily and smoothly, had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work, that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O. Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked about her her escort. Smoke-up said Rosie Cassidy.

"Wasn't you on?" Dempsey donned and picked a scrap with your Lizzy boy, and they've walked out to the slaughter room with him. "How's my hair look done up this way, Maggie?" Maggie laid her hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist.

Gone to fight with Dempsey, she said graciously. They've got to be stopped. Dempsey don't of them can't fight him. Why why?

He'll kill him. What do you care, Sid Rosa? Don't some of them fight every hop? But Maggie was off, darting her zigzag way through the maze of dances.

She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of a single combat. It gave way. And in the instant that she entered, her eye caught the scene. The board standing about with open watches.

Dempsey donned them in his shirt sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist within easy reach of his adversary. Terri O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance, she leapt forward with a scream, leapt in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted. And to whisk from it the long bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom.

The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the given take association. Such a thing had never happened before. Everyone stood motionless for a moment.

Andy Georgian kicked the stiletto with a toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who had come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning. And then O'Hullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey in the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog and nodded his head in the direction of the door.

The back stairs just seppy he said briefly, "Somebody will pitch your hat down after you." Maggie walked up to Dempsey, Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked in bravely in the eye.

"I knew it," Dempsey, she said, "as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. I knew he was a guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and him were scrapping.

I'm guinea's always carry knives, but you don't understand Dempsey. I've never had a fellow in my life. I've got tired of coming with Anna and Jimmy every night. Sorry I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan and brought him along.

I knew there'd be nothing done for him if he came as daygo. I guess I'll resign from the club now." Dempsey turned to Andy Georgian. Like that cheese sliser out the window, he said, and tell him inside that Mr O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tamini Hall.

And then he turned back to Maggie. "Same ag," he said. "I'll see you home." "And how about next Saturday night?

Will you come to the hot with me if I call round for you?" It was remarkable. How quickly Maggie's eyes could chain from Del to a shining brown. Would you, Dempsey, she's Samad?

Say, will a duck swim?