of 'em with "Room to Rent" signs hung out and little basement shops tucked in here and there. Maybe you know the kind—the asphalt always littered with paper, garbage cans left out, and swarms of kids playin' tip-cat or dashin' about on roller skates. Cheap and messy. And to judge by the names on the letter boxes you'd say the tenants had been shipped in from every country on the map. Anyway, our noble allies was well represented—with the French and Italians in the lead and the rest made up of Irish, Jews, Poles and I don't know what else. Everything but straight Americans.

Yet when you come to count up the service flags in the front windows you had to admit that Miss Casey's block must have a good many reg'lar citizens in it at that. There was more blue stars in evidence than you'd find on any three brownstone front blocks down on Madison or up in the Seventies. One flag had four, and none of 'em stood for butlers or chauffeurs.67 Course, some was only faded cotton, a few nothing but colored paper, but every star stood for a soldier, and I'll bet there wasn't a bomb-proofer in the lot.

67

Whether you could get these people together on any kind of a celebration or not was another question. We begins with Mike's place, on the corner.

"Sure!" says Mike. "Let's have a party. I'll ante twenty-five. And, say, I got a cousin in the Knights of Columbus who'll give you some tips on how to manage the thing."

The little old Frenchy in the Parisian hand laundry gave us a boost, too. Even J. Streblitz, high-class tailoring for ladies and gents, chipped in a ten and told us about his boy Herman, who'd been made a corporal and was at Chateau Thierry. Inside of three hours we'd made a sketchy canvas of the whole block, got half a dozen of the men to go on the committee, had over $100 subscribed, and the thing was under way.

"I just knew you could do it," says Vee, when I tells her about the start that's been made.

"Me!" says I. "Why it was mostly Miss Casey. About all I did was tag along and watch her work up the enthusiasm. She's some breeze, she is. When I left her she was plannin' on two bands and free ice cream for everyone who came."

As a matter of fact, that's about all I had68 to do with it, after the first push. Miss Casey must have had a busy week, but she don't lay down once on her reg'lar work nor beg for any time off. All she asks is if Vee and me couldn't be persuaded to be on hand Wednesday night as guests of honor.

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