From the Improvement Era, March 1930 –

A Sensible Girl

By Willy Walker

Jack Eastman certainly could not truthfully be called a ladies’ man. Nevertheless, women were his chief topic of conversation. Jack always proclaimed himself loudly as being first, last, and always for the sensible girl; and just as loudly did he proclaim his distaste for the flapper type of girl.

A sensible girl was the way he described Dorothy Winsome after he saw her for the first time come out of the door of the office opposite his and go swinging down the corridor. He based his opinion on the fact that she wore broad, low-heeled shoes, and didn’t walk like a mincing doll.

It was really the easy grace of her walk that attracted his attention in the first place and he had no idea how much the golden glint in her bright, wavy hair, the soft light in her dark eyes, and the peachiness of her creamy skin had to do with the fact that he was instantly more or less of the opinion that she was the girl for him.

Jack spent a good many of his waking hours after that in thinking about Dorothy. He developed a positively uncanny faculty for timing his goings and comings so that they might coincide with hers. One might have suspected him of lurking behind his own door, with his eye glued to the keyhole, so often did he dart out and stroll down the corridor in her wake. If Dorothy had any suspicion of the intense interest he took in her movements, she gave no evidence of it. She came and went with great serenity, looking, as far as Jack could see, neither to the right nor to the left.

For what seemed to Jack a very long time, the only satisfaction he got out of the situation lay in watching Dorothy’s graceful glidings down the hall. It was a long while before Fate took a hand, but eventually she did come to the rescue.

Dashing back from lunch one day at his usual breakneck speed, Jack arrived at the most crowded corner in the city just in time to see a young woman, whose back had a strangely familiar look, lose her balance and plunge into the street. Jack was the first on the scene, outdistancing all comers. He quickly retrieved the young woman, half carried her across the sidewalk, and propped her against the side of the building before he realized that it was Dorothy Winsome whom he had had the good fortune to rescue.

Fortunately, she had received no personal injury, the only evidence of her mishap being a run in a very magnificent pair of silk stockings. Presently with the aid of Jack’s strong right arm she was able to return to the office.

It was not until he had deposited her at her own door that he- looked down and saw that she wore upon her shapely feet a pair of shoes with outrageously high heels.

“For the love of — !” he ejaculated, “It’s no wonder you came near killing yourself. How on earth do you happen to be wearing those abominable shoes?”

“Abominable shoes?” repeated Dorothy indignantly. “Why, those are the very loveliest shoes you could find anywhere in the city.”

“But your nice, sensible low heels?” Jack wailed. It was a test of his judgment and meant a good deal to him.

“Nice, sensible low heels?” Dorothy reiterated. “Ghastly horrors! Do you suppose I would have worn them for one minute if I hadn’t had to? I sprained my ankle four months ago and just had to wear those old things. The ankle is all right now, and I’m not ever in my whole life going to put those old monstrosities on again.”

Some months later Eastman held Dorothy’s soft hand in his and slipped a very charming ring on the third finger of her left hand.

“Dorothy,” he said solemnly as the ring settled into its proper place, “I’m crazy about you and all that, but if a girl ever got a guy under false pretense, it was you.”

“I don’t care a bit,” she murmured, “just so I got you!”