Free One On The House by Mary Lasswell Page A

search the coaches…I couldn’t bear to lose Aphrodite…then we have to find the local!”
    Mrs. Rasmussen had Old-Timer by the sleeve and the four started forward with a great banging of doors.
    “All aboard!” the conductor shouted outside on the platform.
    Mrs. Feeley looked at her friends in apprehension. Miss Tinkham spied the luggage and handed it down quickly. “Hurry! This door!” The train began to move slowly as the four stepped onto the platform.
    “Too close for comfort!” Miss Tinkham said. “I do hope they have gone! The local is at the next track to the right of the stairs we just came down! We can’t go back up the same way…we must go round!” Miss Tinkham issued directions to her dazed friends. The Philadelphia train was just about to pull out when the conductor herded them aboard.
    “Hardly worth the bother,” she said, “but I am going to sit down anyway.” Miss Tinkham smiled as she handed the conductor the tickets. She got her bag and the lamp ready to carry off as soon as the train stopped. She smiled dreamily:
    “I do hope dear Katy checks the laundry!”
    “The laundry? What put laundry in your head at a time like this?”
    “All that money! It’s buttoned up in the pocket of the baby’s shirt!”
    The train slowed down and the conductor yelled:
    “Newark! Newark! Station stop Newark!”
    “This is it!” Mrs. Feeley said. “The end o’ the line, people!” She grinned and turned to Miss Tinkham; “I don’t mind a damn bit! I shoulda knowed you’d find some way to give that money back!”
    Outside on the grim tunnel-like platform, they put down their bags and looked around them.
    “What do the stars say now, Miss Tinkham?” Mrs. Feeley said.
    Miss Tinkham smiled bleakly.
     
    Thirty days hath September,
    April, June,
    And a vagrant!
     
    “We can’t even qualify for that,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We got a home address.”
    “Don’t lose it!” Mrs. Feeley laughed without much spirit.
    “Where do we go from here?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked.
    “We go downstairs an’ see if the walkin’ is all took up,” Mrs. Feeley said. The streets below were small and dingy. The four walked slowly for several blocks searching for a highway or main thoroughfare of some kind. All the streets seemed alike, full of factories and storage warehouses.
    “No stores,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Better get us a coupla loaves day-old bread.”
    “This is obviously some kind of manufacturing district…all these dark work-lofts and packing plants.” Miss Tinkham put the straps of her small bag over her wrist to leave both arms free to carry the lamp.
    “Where’s the houses? Don’t nobody live here at all?” Mrs. Feeley said.
    “They must be in a different section,” Miss Tinkham said and led the way down another mean street. At the end of it she sighted a neon sign.
    “Look!” she cried in the tone Noah must have used when he spotted the dove.
    Mrs. Feeley glanced at the bar on the corner, then at Mrs. Rasmussen. “Reckon we can afford it?”
    “I feel like sittin’ down…an’ we gotta go somewhere!”
    “We must marshal our forces,” Miss Tinkham said. “It will do as a point of departure.”
    “How much we got? Can’t be much.” Mrs. Feeley looked hopefully at Mrs. Rasmussen.
    “Two thirty-two for the tickets; five cents for the phone last night makes two thirty-seven…from three eighty-seven, leaves a buck an’ a half, even.”
    The red leather and chrome stools of the bar gleamed invitation.
    Mrs. Feeley emptied the pockets of her seersucker suit. “Nothin” but Kleenex! When I come out they’re gonna be full o’ pretzels or potato chips.”
    Miss Tinkham pushed open the door and the four entered. The bar was deserted save for a bartender in a flossy white coat and horn-rimmed glasses. Miss Tinkham stood Aphrodite in a corner and then joined her friends at the bar. The bartender stared at them:
    “What’s your pleasure?”
    “Four beers,” Mrs. Feeley said