New Britain herald., 1927-08-26
shoulder straps, one by one.

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 The May night was the first real ly hot night of the season. The kind of night when people like to leave the town behind them and get out into the wide darkness of the coun- try.
 At ' o'clock there were seven automobiles parked along the ever green hedge in Aunt Emily's garden, and there were eighteen people in her dining room. eating delicious dinners from her Indian Tree china
 At half past seven another very small roadster drove in and stopped beside the seven cars. Ted Sloan got out and walked around the house and into the kitchen, where Aunt Emily was having high words with Millie.
 "All right" she was saying, "you refuse to help me out tonight and you'll never eat another meal in this housel What makes you think you're too good to carry platter of chicken into that room, I'd like to know"
 NIillie shot look at her that was like a dagger being thrown through the air. "She wants me to wait on table like a servant" she said in dlgnantly to Ted.
 Servant nothing." snapped Aunt Elm, stirring bowlful of giblet gravy as if she were beating eggs Sally and I wait on table, and it won't hurt you to. You haven't paid me a cents worth of board since you've been here, and I'm going to get some work out of you from now on, or know the reason why! Now, you put that apron on and dance right into that room with this platter"
 She banged the big, steaming dish Gown upon the table, and y<ied a white embroidered apron around Millie's slender waist. She gave her q shove toward the dining room door, and Millie actually went!
 This makes me sick" she paused long enough to remark. There's no reason why Sally shouldn't be doing this. This notion of hers that she can dance we'll enough for these people is a joke, anyway She's just making a fool of herself doing it." Millie had been talking to her moth CT, evidently.
 A second later the door that led from the hall swung open and Sally flashed into the opening. The tiny bells shone and tinkled on her ankles, on her shoulders, on her slim little wrists. Her smiling mouth was redder than the scarlet mask that covered the upper half of her face, and she had painted the heels of her satin slippers scarlet, too. She was nothing like the quiet, modest Sally who kept house and worked hard every day of her life.
 Flaming youth!" said Ted. with a surprised laugh, his eyes on the provocative mouth, with the deep 6imple in one corner. What's the idea of the mask. for Pete's sake?" He came closer and Tipped the bells on one of Sally's perfect little shoulders. And the bells? What are they for?"
 Music answered Sally, and her voice drowned in the sudden clash of jazz that sounded from the dining room.
 Here we go. Ted," she cried ex- citedly. She graspcd his hand with one of hers that was icy with nerv- cusncss. Pray for us. Aunt Em."
 "Ploase don't waggle your shoul- ders-that's all I ask," called Aunt Elm. as she watched them go--the stocky, red headed boy and girl, with her smiling, tilted mouth, her swaying figure covered with little bells that tinkled with every move she made.
 Sally was no more like the Sally Of the dishpan and the dictaphone at that moment than a brilliant bird of paradise is like an English spar row.
 The people who sat at the tables in the room looked up from their plates and forgot 10 look down again while she stood there in the door way, poised on her toes.
 And then she and Ted began to dance-just as they had danced hundreds of times before at "The Blue Lagoon" Check to check, toe 10 toe, swaying and stepping in per- feet time. It was a joy to see them.
 The music stopped for a minute and then broke into a double time bit, a Southern Blues, with all the wild poetry of savage elemental things written into it.
 Sally swung away from Ted. and stood alone in the center of the room her breast falling and rising her lips parted, and her feet ani shoulders keeping time to the swift, wild music.
 And then she beGan to do the 'Shimmy Black Bottom" dance that she had shown Ted Sloan on this very floor not so long ago.
 She combined those two famous aances. that can be SO suggestive if ione badly. and made of them thing of beauty. She rolicked and frolicked around the floor, the tiny bells tinkling as she moved. She danced as if she loved to dance-as f it were the beginning and the end of being alive. As if there were