The Coming Out of Maggie (1917)

Maggie Toole of the east side is no belle. She is unsought and unsung for by the gallant of the Give and Take Association, which each Saturday night holds a dance for the girls of Rhinegold's paper-box factory. Maggie's hero is Dempsey Donovan, the valiant leader, who wears a dress suit - sometimes. But Dempsey is far beyond poor Maggie's reach, until - Well, one Saturday Maggie blossoms in with the grandest specimen of dandified manhood ever seen in the district, Terry O'Sullivan, she calls him. After the stranger has danced twice with Dempsey's paper-box factory girl - trouble is in sight. Dempsey, one of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan's lieutenants, ascertains that the latter does not know Terry O'Sullivan. So Dempsey picks a fight, and takes "Terry" to a rear room, where private grudges are settled. Maggie, learning of this, is panic-stricken. She breaks into the room just in time to catch "Terry's" arm upraised with a stiletto to strike Dempsey. "I knew it, Dempsey," she wails, "His name is Tony Spinelli!" Tony and his cheese-cutter are kicked out, and poor Maggie starts to cry. Dempsey. with an altogether new gentleness in his manner, takes one of Maggie's hands and say, "I'll see you home, Mag. And how about next Saturday? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around?" "With you?" she stammers, "Say - will a duck swim?"