"See!"

"Pink as cherries!"

"That's right, kid me along."

"Tried to dodge me to-night, didn't you, kitten?"

"I—I didn't think I ought to go to-night."

"It's a good thing my feelings ain't hurt easy."

"Honest, Jimmie, I didn't try to dodge you. I—I only thought, with the girls here gabbling so much about last Tuesday night and all, it wouldn't look right. And he had a spell last night again, and the doctor said we—we ought to get him South before the first snow—South, where the sun shines. But he's got as much chance of gettin' South as I have of climbing the South Pole!"

"A pretty little thing like you climbing the South Pole! I'd be there with field-glasses all-righty!"

"I—I went up and talked and begged and begged and talked to old Ingram up at the Aid Society to-day, but the old skinflint says they can't do nothing for an employee after he's been out of his department more'n eight weeks, and—and Harry's been out twelve. He says the Society can't do nothing no more, much less send him South. Just like a machine he talked. I could have killed him!"

"Poor little filly! I was that surprised when I seen you was back in the store again! There ain't been a classy queen behind the counter since you left."

"Aw, Jimmie, no wonder the girls say you got your race-horses beat for speed."

"That's me!"

Aisles thinned and the store relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of trampled debris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left their pickings—a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of Christmastide, and reeking with foolish sweat.

"Button up there, Doll, and come on; it's a swell night for Eskimos."

Mr. Fitzgibbons folded over his own double-breasted coat, fitted his flat-brimmed derby hat on his well-oiled hair, drew a pair of gray suede gloves over his fingers, and hooked his slender cane to his arm.

"Ready, Doll?"

"The girls, Jimmie—look at 'em rubbering and gabbling like ducks! It—it ain't like I could do any good at home, it ain't."

"I'd be the first to ship you there if you could. You know me, Doll!"

His words deadened her doubts like a soporific. She glanced about for the moment at the Dionysian spectacle of the Mammoth Store ravished to chaos by the holiday delirium; at the weary stream of shoppers and workers bending into the storm as they reached the doors; at the swift cancan of snowflakes dancing whitely and swiftly without; at Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons standing attendant. Then she smiled.

"Come on, Jimmie!"

"Come on yourself, Doll!"

Snow beat in their faces like shot as they emerged into the merry night.

She shivered in her thin coat. "Gee! ain't it cold!"

"Not so you can notice it. Watch me, Doll!" He hailed a passing cab with a double flourish of cane and half lifted her in, his fingers closing tight over her arm. "Little Doll, now I got you! And we understand one another, don't we, Doll?"

"Yes, Jimmie."

She leaned back, quiescent, nor did his hold of her relax. A fairy etching of snow whitened the windows and wind-shield, and behind their security he leaned closer until she could feel the breath of his smile.

"Doll, we sure understand each other, don't we, sweetness? Eh? Answer me, sweetness, don't we? Eh? Eh?"

"Yes, Jimmie."

Over the city bells tolled of Christmas.

* * * * *

The gentle Hestia of Christmas Eve snug beside her hearth, with little stockings dangling like a badly matched row of executed soldiers, the fire sinking into embers to facilitate the epic descent from the chimney, the breathing of dreaming children trembling for their to-morrow—this gentle Hestia of a thousand, thousand Christmas Eves was not on the pay-roll of Maxwell's thousand-dollar-a-week cabaret.

A pandering management, with its finger ever on the thick wrist of its public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and mistletoe commingling with the grape.

An electric fountain shot upward its iridescent spray, now green, now orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, white limbed, bathed in light.

On the topmost of a flight of marble steps a woman sang of love who had defiled it. At candle-shaded tables thick tongues wagged through thick aromas and over thick foods, and as the drama was born rhythmic out of the noisy dithyramb, so through these heavy discords rose the tink of Venetian goblets, thin and pure—the reedy music of grinning Pan blowing his pipes.

Rose-colored light lay like a blush of pleasure over a shining table spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs. Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder. Following her Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons, smiling.

"Here, sit on this side of the table, Doll, so you can see the big show."

"Gee!"

"It's the best table in the room to see the staircase dancing."

"Gee!"

"Told you I was going to show you a classy time to-night, didn't I, Doll?"

"Yeh, but—but I ain't dressed for a splash like this, Jimmie, I—I ain't."

"Say, they know me round here, Doll. They know I'd fall for a pair of eyes like yourn, if you was doing time on a rock-pile and I had to bring you in stripes."

"I'm—a—sight!"

"If you wasn't such a little pepper-box I'd blow you to a feather or two."

"Ain't no pepper-box!"

"You used to be, Doll. Two years back there wasn't a girl behind the counter ever gimme the cold storage like you did. I liked your nerve, too, durned if I didn't!"

"I—I only thought you was guyin'."

"I 'ain't forgot, Doll, the time I asked you out to dinner one night when you was lookin' pretty blue round the gills, and you turned me down so hard the whole department gimme the laugh. It's a good thing I 'ain't got no hard feelings."

"Honest, Jimmie, I—"

"That was just before you stole the march on me with the Charley from the gents' furnishing. I ain't holding it against you, Doll, but you gotta be awful nice to me to make up for it, eh?"

A shower of rose-colored rain from the fountain threw its soft blush across her face.

"Aw, Jimmie, don't rub it in! Ain't I tryin' hard enough to—to square myself? I—I was crazy with the heat two years ago. I—aw, I—Now it's different. I—It's like you say, Jimmie, you 'ain't got no hard feelings." She swallowed a rising in her throat and took a sip of clear, cold water. A light film of tears swam in her eyes. "You 'ain't, have you, Jimmie?"

He leaned across the table and out of the hearing of the attendant waiter. "Not if we understand each other, Doll. You stick to me and you'll wear diamonds. Gad! I bet if I had two more fillies like Violet I'd run Diamond Pat Cassidy's string of favorites back to pasture, you little queenie, you!"

Her timid glance darted like the hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf. "I ain't much of a looker for a Broadway palace like you've brought me to, Jimmie. Look at 'em, all dolled up over there. Honest, Jimmie, I—I feel ashamed."

"Just you stick to me, peaches, and there ain't one at that table that's got on anything you can't have twice over. I know that gang—the pink queen and all. 'Longside of you they look like stacks o' bones tied up in a rag o' satin."

"Aw, Jimmie, look at 'em, so blond and all!"

"They're a broken-winded bunch. Look at them bottles on their table! We're going to have twice as many and only one color in our glasses, kiddo. Yellow, the same yellow as your hair, the kinda yellow that's mostly gold. That's the kind of bubble water we're going to buy, kiddo!"

"Jimmie, such a spender!"

"That's me!"

"It's sure like the girls say—the sky's your limit."

"Look, Doll, there's the swellest little dancer in this town—one swell little pal and a good sport. Watch her, kiddo—watch her do that staircase dance. Ain't she a lalapaloo!"

A buxom nymph of the grove, whose draperies floated from her like flesh-colored mist, spun to the wild passion of violins up the eight marble steps of the marble flight. A spotlight turned the entire range of the spectrum upon her. She was like a spinning tulip, her draperies folding her in a cup of sheerest petals, her limbs shining through.

"Classy, ain't she, Doll?"

"Well, I guess!"

"Wanna meet her? There ain't none of 'em that 'ain't sat at my table many a time."

"I like it better with just you, Jimmie."

"Sweetness, don't you look at me like that or you'll get me so mixed up I'll go out and buy the Metropolitan Tower for your Christmas present. Whatta you want for Christmas—eh, Doll?"

"Aw, Jimmie, I don't want nothing. I 'ain't got no right to take nothing from you!" She played with the rich, unpronounceable foods on her plate and took a swallow of golden liquid to wash down her fiery confusion. "I—'ain't got no right."

"When I get to likin' a little girl there ain't nothing she 'ain't got a right to."

"Aw, Jimmie, when you talk like that I feel so—so—"

"So what, Doll?"

"So—so—"

"Gowann, Doll."

"Aw, I can't say it. You'll think I'm fresh."

But she regarded him with the nervous eyes of a gazelle and the red swam high up into her hair, and he drained his glass down to the bottom of its hollow stem and leaned his warming face closer.

"You treat me white, sweetness, and understand me right, and you won't be sorry for nothing you say. Drink, Doll, drink to you 'n' me—you 'n' me."

Their bubble-thin glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr. Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched her cheek lightly, gritting his teeth in a fine frenzy of delight.

"That's the way to make 'em sit up and take notice, Doll, that's the way I like 'em. Live! As live and frisky as colts!"

An attendant placed a souvenir of the occasion beside her plate—a white wool bear, upright and with bold bead eyes and a flare of pink bow beneath its chin.

"Oh-h-h!"

"See, Doll, a Teddy bear! By Gad! a Teddy bear with his arms stretched out to hug her! Gad! if I was that Teddy I'd hug the daylight out of her, too! Gad! wouldn't I!"

Mrs. Violet Smith wafted the bead-eyed toy a kiss, then slapped him sharply sidewise, toppling him in a heap, and her easy laughter mingled with her petulance.

"I wanna big grizzly, Jimmie; a great big brown grizzly bear with a grin. I wanna big brown grizzly."

"'Ain't you got one, Doll? A little white one with a pink bow. Here, let's give him a drink!"

But the petulance grew upon her, nor would she be gainsaid. "I wanna big brown grizzly—a great big brown one with a grin."

"Aw, Doll, look at this little white one—a classy little white one. Look at his nose, cutie, made out of a button. Look, ain't that some nose! Look, ain't—"

"A big brown one that I can dance with, Jimmie. I wanna dance. Gee! who could dance with a little dinky devil like that! I wanna dance, Jimmie, honest I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I—Gee, I wanna dance. Jimmie, honest, I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough. I—Gee! I wanna dance, Jimmie! Gee, I wanna—"

He whacked the table and flashed the twinkle of a wink to the waiter. "Gad! Doll, if you look at me with them frisky eyes I—"

"I wanna bear, Jimmie, a great big brown—"

"Waiter!"

"A great big brown one, Jimmie, with a grin. Tell him a great big brown one!"

"Waiter, that ain't no kind of a souvenir to bring a lady—a cheap bunch o' wool like that. Bring her a great big brown one—"

"A great big brown one with a grin, tell him, Jimmie."

"We have no brown ones, sir; only the small white ones for the ladies."

"Get one, then! Get out and buy the biggest one they got on Broadway. Get out and get one then!"

"But, sir, the—"

"If the stores ain't open, bust 'em open! I ain't the best customer this joint has got not to get service when my lady friend wants to dance with a great big brown bear. If my lady friend can't get a great big brown bear—"

"With a grin, Jimmie."

"—with a grin, there are other places where she can get two great big brown bears if she wants 'em."

"I'll see, sir. I'll see what I can do."

Mr. Fitzgibbons brought a fist down upon the table so that the dishes rattled and the wine lopped out of the glasses. "Sure you'll see, and quick, too! A great big brown bear, d'you hear? My lady friend wants to dance, don't you, Doll? You wanna dance, and nothing but a great big brown bear won't do—eh, Doll?"

"With a grin, Jimmie!"

"With a grin, d'ye hear?" He whacked at her hand in delight and they laughed in right merry duet.

"Oh, Jimmie, you're killing!"

"The sky's my limit!"

She nibbled at a peach whose cheeks were pink as her own, and together from the great overflowing bowl of fruits they must trim her hat with its boyish brim. First, a heavy bunch of black hothouse grapes that she pinned deftly to the crown, a cluster of cherries, a purple plum, a tangerine stuck at a gay angle. They surveyed their foolish labor of caprice with little rills of laughter that rose and fell, and when she replaced her hat the cherries bobbed and kissed her cheek and the adjoining group leaned to her in the kinship of merriment.

"It's a sweller trimming than I gave it last Tuesday, Jimmie. Look how tight it's all pinned on. Look at the cherries! I'm going to blow 'em right off and then eat 'em—eat 'em! Pf-f-f-f!"

She made as if to catch them with pursed lips, but they bobbed sidewise, and he regarded her with a swelling pride, then glanced about the room, pleased at the furor that followed her little antics.

"Gad, Doll, you're a winner! I can pick 'em every time! You ain't dolled up like the rest of 'em, but you're a winner!"

"Oh-oh-oh!"

"That's the ticket, waiter! I knew there wasn't nothing round here that tin wouldn't buy. I guess that ain't some great big brown grizzly with a grin for you, Doll!"

"Oh-oh-oh!"

"I guess they didn't rustle round when your Uncle Fuller began to get sore, and get a great big brown one for you! Gad! the biggest I ever seen—almost as big as you, Doll! That's the ticket! There ain't anything in this town tin can't buy!"

"Oh-oh-oh!" She lifted the huge toy off the silver tray held out to her and buried her shining face in the soft, silky wool. "Ain't he a beauty? Ain't he the softest, brownest beauty?"

"Now, peaches, now cherries, now you little fancy-fruit stand, there goes the music. Let's see that dance!"

"Aw, Jimmie, I—I was only kiddin'!"

"Kiddin' nothing! Come now, Doll, I blew me ten bucks if I blew me a cent for that bunch of wool. Come now, let's see that dance you been blowing about! Go as far as you like, Doll!"

"I—honest, I was only guyin', Jimmie."

"Don't be a quitter and make me sore, Doll! I wanna show 'em I pick the live ones every time. There's the music!"

"Aw, I—"

"Go as far as you like, Doll. Here, gimme your hat! Go to it, sister. If you land in the fountain by mistake I'll blow you to the swellest new duds on the Avenue."

"I don't know no dances no more, Jimmie. I—I can't dance with this big old thing anyways. Look, he's almost as big as me!"

"Go it alone, then, Doll; but get up and show 'em. Get up and show 'em that I don't pick nothing but the livest! Get up and show 'em, Doll; get up and show 'em!"

She set down her glass suddenly and pirouetted to her feet. "Here—I—go—Jimmie!"

"Go to it, Doll!"

She leaped forward in her narrow little skirt, laughing. Chairs scraped back and a round of applause went with her. Knives and forks beat tattoo on frail glasses; a tinsel ball flung from across the room fell at her feet. She stooped to it, waved it, and pinned it to her bosom. Her hair, rich as Australian gold, half escaped its chignon and lay across her shoulders. She danced light as the breeze up the marble stairway, and at its climax the spotlight focused on her, covering her with the sheen of mica; then just as lightly down the steps again, so rapidly that her hair was tossed outward in a fairy-like effect of spun gold.

"Go to it, Doll. I'm here to back you!"

"Dare me, Jimmie?"

"Dare what?"

"Dare me?"

"Yeh, I dare you to do anything your little heart desires. Gad! you—Gad! if she 'ain't!"

Like a bird in flight she danced to the gold coping, paused like an audacious Undine in a moment of thrilled silence, and then into the purple and gold, violet and red rain of the electric fountain, her arms outstretched in a radiant tableau vivant, water crowding in about her knees, spray dancing on her upturned face.

"Gad! the little daredevil! I didn't think she had it in her. Gad! the little devil!"

Clang! Clang! Tink! Tink! "Bravo, kiddo! Who-o-o-p!"

Shaking the spray out of her eyes, her hair, she emerged to a grand orchestral flare. The same obsequious hands that applauded her helped her from the gold coping. Waiters dared to smile behind their trays. Up to her knees her dark-cloth skirt clung dankly. Water glistened on her shoulders, spotted her blouse. Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons lay back in his chair, weak from merriment.

"Gad! I didn't think she had it in her! Gad! I didn't!"

"Bo-o-o-o!" She shook herself like a dainty spaniel, and he grasped the table to steady himself against his laughter.

"Gad! I didn't!"

"Fine weather for ducks!"

"Gad!"

"I'm a nice girl and they treat me like a sponge."

"Gad!"

"April weather we're havin', ain't it?"

"You ain't much wet, are you, Doll?"

"Bo-o-o-o!"

"Here, waiter, get the lady a coat or something. Gad! you're the hit of the place, Doll! Aw, you ain't cold, hon? Look, you ain't even wet through—what you shaking about?"

She drew inward little breaths of shivery glee. "I ain't wet! Say, whatta you think that fountain's spouting—gasoline? I—ain't—wet! Looka my hair curling up like it does in a rain-storm! Feel my skirt down here at the hem! Can you beat it? I ain't wet, he says!"

"Here, drink this, Doll, and warm up."

"No."

She threw a dozen brilliant glances into the crowd, tossed an invitational nod to the group adjoining, and clapped her hands for the iridescent Christmas ball that dangled over their table.

"Here, send 'er over—here, give you leave. I'm some little catcher myself."

It bounded to her light as air, and she caught it deftly, tossed it ceilingward until it bounced against an incandescent bulb, tossed it again, caught it lightly, nor troubled to heed the merry shouts for its return.

From across the room some one threw her a great trailing ribbon of gilt paper. She bound it about her neck like a ruff. A Christmas star with a fluted tissue-paper edge floated into her lap. She wore it like an earring, waggling it slyly so that her curls were set a-bobbing.

"Gimme my bear."

She hugged the woolly image to her as if she would beg its warmth, her teeth clicking the while with chill.

"Take a little swallow or two to warm you up, Doll!"

"Gee! I took your dare, Jimmie—and—and—br-r-r-r!"

"A little swallow, Doll!"

"I took your dare, Jimmie, and I—I can feel my skirt shrinking up like it was rigging. I—I guess I'll have to go to work next week in a sheet."

"Didn't I tell you I was backing this toot, sister?"

"I didn't have no right to dive in there and spoil my duds, Jimmie. I—"

"Who had a better right?"

"Ain't it just like a nut like me? But I 'ain't had a live time for so long I—I lost my head. But I 'ain't got no right to spoil the only duds I got to my back. Looka this waist; the color's running. I ought to—I—Oh, like I wasn't in enough of a mess already without—without—acting the crazy nut!"

"Aw, Doll, cut the tragedy! Didn't I tell you I was going to blow you to anything your little heart desires?"

"But the only duds I got to my back, Jimmie! Oh, ain't I a nut when I get started, Jimmie! Ain't I a nut!"

She regarded him with tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her lips. A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her smile broke out into sunshine.

"Ain't I a nut, though!"

"You're a real, full-blooded little winner, that's what you are, and you can't say I ain't one, neither, Doll. Here's your damages. Now go doll yourself up like a Christmas tree!"

He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to the floor.

"I—Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am? There, take your money. I—honest, I—What kind of a girl do you think I am?"

"Now, now, sister, don't we understand each other? Them's damages, kiddo. Wasn't it me dared you? Ain't it my fault you doused your duds?"

"Yes, but—"

"Aw, come now, Doll, don't pull any of that stuff on me! You and me understand each other—not?"

"Yes, but—"

"Take and forget it. You won it. That ain't even interest on the filly's winnings. Take it. I never started nothing in my life I couldn't see the finish to. Take it and forget it!" He crammed the bill into her reluctant fingers, closed them over it, and sealed her little fist with a grandiose pat. "Forget it, Doll!"

But her lids fluttered and her confusion rose as if to choke her. "I—honest, I—Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am?"

"I told you I think you're the sweetest, livest little queen I know."

"Aw!"

"Come on, little live wire. Put on your swell, hothouse-trimmed hat. I'm going to take you to a place farther up the street where there are two staircases and a fountain twice as big for you to puddle your little footsies in. Waiter—here—check—get a cab! Here, little Doll, quit your shivering and shaking and lemme help you on—lemme help you."

She was suddenly pale, but tense-lipped like a woman who struggles on the edge of a swoon. "Jimmie, honest, I—I'm shaking with chills! Jimmie—I—I can't go in these duds, neither. I—I gotta go home now. He'll be wakin' and I—I gotta go home now. I'm all shaking." In spite of herself her lips quivered and an ague shot through her body. "I—I gotta go home now, Jimmie. Look at me shivering, all shivering!"

"Home now!" His eyes retreated behind a network of calculating wrinkles and she paled as she sat. "Home now? Say, Doll, I thought—"

"Honest, I wanna go to the other place, but I'm cold, Jimmie, and—wet through. I gotta keep well, Jimmie, and I—I oughtta go home."

"Pah!" he said, spluttering out the end of a bitten cigar. "If I'd 'a' known you was a puny Doll like that!"

"I ain't, Jimmie; I—"

"If I'd 'a' known you was that puny! It's like I been sayin', Doll, it ain't like you and me don't understand each other. I—"

"Sure we do, Jimmie. Honest, I—To-morrow night I—I can fix it so that—that the sky's my limit. I'll meet you at Hinkley's at eight, cross my heart on a wishbone, Jimmie."

"Cross it!"

"There!"

"To-night, Jimmie, I'm chilled—all in. Look at me in these duds, Jimmie. I'm cold. Oh, Jimmie, get me a cab quick, please; I'm co-old!"

She relaxed frankly into a chill that rumbled through her and jarred her knees together. A little rivulet of water oozed from her hair, zigzagged down her cheek and seeped into her blouse, but her blue-lipped smile persisted.

"Ain't I a nut, though! But wait till you see me dolled up to-morrow night, Jimmie! Eight at Hinkley's. I didn't have a hunch how cold—how cold that water was. Next time they gotta—heat it."

"Got to heat it is good, Doll! All I got to do is ask once, and my word's law round here. Here, take a swallow and warm up, hon. You don't need to go home if you warm up right."

But the glass tinked against her teeth.

"I—I can't'"

"Gowann, kiddo!"

"I'll take some home with me to warm me up when I get in bed, Jimmie. I—Not that kind, give it to me red like you did last Tuesday night, without the sparkles. That's the kind to warm me up. Order a bottle of red without the sparkles, Jimmie—without the sparkles. I—I can't stand no more bubbles to-night."

He helped her into her coat, and she leaned to him with a little movement of exhaustion that tightened his hold of her.

"Hurry a cab, waiter; the lady's sick!"

"Ain't I a nut, though!"

"Poor wet little Doll, I didn't think you was much more'n damp! You gotta make up for this to-morrow night, Doll. Eight sharp, Doll, and no funny business to-morrow night."

"Eight sharp!"

"Swell little sport you are, gettin' the chills! But we understand each other, don't we, Doll?"

"Sure, Jimmie!"

"Come on, hon. Shakin' like a leaf, ain't you? Wait till I get you out in the cab, I'll warm you up. You look just like a Christmas doll, all rigged up in that hat and that star and all—just like a Christmas doll."

"My grizzly, my brown grizzly! Gee, I nearly forgot my grizzly!"

And she packed the huge toy under her arm, along with the iridescent ball and the gewgaws of her plunder, and out into the cab, where an attendant tucked a bottle of the red warming wine between them.

"Ready, Doll?"

"Ready."

The silent storm had continued its silent work, weaving its blanket softer, deeper. The straggling pedestrians of early morning bent their heads into it and drove first paths through the immaculate mantle. The fronts of owl cars and cabs were coated with a sugary white rime. Broadway lay in a white lethargy that is her nearest approach to sleep.

Snow-plows were already abroad clearing tracks, dry snow-dust spinning from under them. At Longacre Square the flakes blew upward in spiral flurries, erratic, full of antics. The cab snorted, plunged, leaped forward. Mr. Fitzgibbons inclined toward the little huddle beside him.

"Sweetness, now I got you! You little sweetness you, now I got you, sweetness!"

"Jimmie! Quit! Quit! You—you old—you—you—"

The breath of a forgotten perfume and associations webby with age stir through the lethargy of years. Memories faded as flowers lift their heads. The frail scent of mignonette roused with the dust of letters half a century old, and eyes too dim and watery to show the glaze of tears turn backward fifty years upon the mignonette-bowered scene of love's young dream. A steel drawing-room car rolling through the clean and heavy stench of cow pasture, and a steady-eyed, white-haired capitalist, rolling on his rolling-stock, leans back against the upholstery and gazes with eyes tight closed upon a steady-eyed, brown-haired youngster herding in at eventide. The whiff of violets from a vender's tray, and a young man dreams above his ledger. The reek of a passing brewer's wagon, and white faces look after, suddenly famished.

When the familiar pungency of her boarding-house flowed in and round Mrs. Violet Smith, she paused for a moment and could not push through the oppression. Then, with the associations of odor crowding in about her, she stripped herself of her gewgaws, as if here even the tarnished tinsel of pleasure could have no place, and tiptoed up the weary wind of three unlighted flights and through the thick staleness of unaired halls.

At the third landing a broom and a dirty tangled debris of scrub-cloths lay on the topmost stair, as if an aching slavey had not found the strength to remove them. They caught the heel of her shoe, pitching her forward so that she fell sharply against her own door. In the gloom she paused for a palpitating moment, her hands pressing her breast, listening; then deposited her laden hat, the little pile of tinsel and the woolen bear on the floor outside the door.

"Vi! Vi! That you, dear?"

She pulled at her strength and opened the door suddenly, blowing in like a gale. "It's me, darlin'."

She was suddenly radiant as morning, and a figure on the bed in the far corner of the dim-lit room raised to greet her with vague, white-sleeved arms outstretched. She flew to their haven.

"Darlin', darlin', how you feeling?"

"Vi, poor tired little girl!"

"Harry, how you feeling, darlin'? They worked the force all night—first time ever. How you feeling, darlin'—how?" And she burrowed kisses on the poor, white face, and then deep into the tiny crib and back again into the vague white arms. "Oh, my babies, both of you! How you feeling, darlin'? So worried I've been. And the kid! Oh, God, darlin', I—I been so busy rightin' stock and all—all night they kept the force. I got such news, darlin'. We should worry that it's snowing! Such news, darlin'! The kid, Harry—did Mrs. Quigley bring her milk on time? How you feeling, darlin'! You 'ain't coughed, have you?"

He kissed her damp hair and turned her face up like a flower, so that his deep-sunk eyes read into hers. "I 'ain't coughed once since noon, darlin'. We should worry if it snows is right! A doctor's line of talk can't knock me out. I can buck up without going South. I 'ain't coughed once since noon, Vi; I—"

A strangling paroxysm shook him in mockery of his words, and she crouched low beside the bed, her face etched in the agony of bearing each rack and pain with him.

"Oh, my darlin'! Oh—oh—"

"It's—all right now, Vi! It's all right! It's all right!"

"Oh, my darlin', yes, yes, it's all right now! All right now!"

She ran her hands over his face, as if to reassure herself of his very features, nor would she let him read into her streaming eyes.

"Lay quiet, Harry darlin'; it's all right! Oh, my darlin'!"

"'S-s-s-s-h, Vi dear! Sure it's all right. 'S-s-s-s-h! Don't cry, Vi!"

"I—I-oh—oh—"

"'S-s-s-s-h, darlin'! Don't!"

"I—oh, I can't help it; but I ain't cryin', Harry, I ain't!"

"All worn out and cold and wet, that's what's a-hurtin' you. All worn out and hysterical and all! Poor little Vi-dee!"

"I—I ain't."

"It's all over now, Vi. See, I'm all right! Everything's all right! Just my luck to have the first one since noon right when you get home. It's all over now, Vi. Everything's over, Christmas rush and all. Don't you worry about the snow, neither, darlin'. I knew it would scare you up, but it takes more than a doctor's line of talk to down-and-out me."

"I—I ain't worryin', darlin'."

"You're the one I been worryin' about, Vi. It's just like the kid was worried too—cried when Mrs. Quigley sung her to sleep."

"Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!"

"Don't worry, dear. She don't even know it's Christmas—a little thing like her. And, anyways, look, Vi-dee, Mrs. Quigley brought her up that little stuffed lamb there. But she don't even know it's Christmas, dear; she don't even know. You poor, tired little kiddo!"

"I ain't tired."

"I been lying here all night, sweet, thinking and thinking—a little doll like you hustling and a big hulk like me lying here."

"'S-s-s-s-h! Honest, Harry, it's fun being back in the store again till you get well—honest!"

"I never ought to let you done it in the beginning, darlin'. Remember that night, even when I was strong enough to move a ox team, I told you there was bum lungs 'way back somewhere in my family? I never ought to let you take a chance, Vi-dee—I never ought!"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Didn't I say I'd marry you if you was playin' hookey from the graveyard? Wasn't that the answer I give you even when you was strong as a whole team?"

"I didn't have no right to you, baby—the swellest little peach in the store! I—I didn't have no right to you! Vi-dee, what's the matter? You look like you got the horrors—the horrors, hon! Vi-dee!"

"Oh, don't, Harry, don't. I—I can't stand it, hon. I—I'm tired, darlin', darlin', but don't look like that, darlin'. I—got news—I got news."

'"S-s-s-s-h, baby, you're all hysterical from overwork and all tired out from worry. There ain't no need to worry, baby. Quigley'll say it can go over another week. She ain't dunning for board, she ain't, baby."

"I—oh—I—"

"Shaking all over, baby, just like you got the horrors! I bet you got scared when you see the snow coming and tackled Ingram to-day, and you're blue. What you got the horrors about, baby—Ingram?"

"No! No!"

"I told you not to ask the old skinflint. I told you they won't do nothing after twelve weeks. I ain't bluffed off by snow-storm, Vi. I don't need South no more'n you do, I don't, baby. I ain't a dead one by a long shot yet! Vi, for God's sake, why you got the horrors?"

She tried to find words and to smile at him through the hot rain of her tears, and the deep-rooted sobs that racked her subsided and she snuggled closer and burrowed into his pillow.

"I—I can't keep it no longer, darlin'. I ain't cryin', I—I 'ain't got the horrors. I'm laffin'. I—I seen him, Harry—Ingram—I seen him just before closin', and—and—oh, Harry, you won't believe it, he said—he—I—I'm laffin' for joy, Harry!"

"What? What, Vi? What?"

She fumbled into the bosom of her blouse and slid a small folded square of yellowback bill into his hand.

"What? What, Vi? What?"

"A cool hundred, darlin'. Ingram—the Aid Society, because it's Christmas, darlin'. They opened up—a cool hundred! We—we can light out To-morrow, darlin'. A cool hundred! Old Ingram, the old skinflint, he opened up like—like a oyster. South, all of us, to-morrow, darlin'; it ain't nothing for me to get a job South. When I seen it was snowin' I'd 'a' killed somebody to get it. I—I had to have it and we got it, darlin', we—we got it—a cool hundred!"

He lay back on the pillow, suddenly limp, the bill fluttering to the coverlet, and she slid her arm beneath his head.

"You could have knocked me down, too, darlin'. Easy, just like that he forked over. 'What's a Aid Society for?' he kept sayin'. 'What's a Aid Society for?'"

"Vi, I—"

"Don't cry, darlin', don't cry. I just can't stand it!"

"I—"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Easy, just like that he gimme it, darlin'."

"And me lying here hatin' him for a skinflint and his store for a bloodsucker and the Aid Society for a fake!"

"Yes, yes, darlin'."

"I feel new already, Vi. I can feel the sun already shining through me. If he was here, I—I could just kiss his hand; that's how it feels for a fellow to get his nerve back. I got my chance now, Vi; there ain't nothing can keep me down. Just like he says—I'll be a new man out there. Look, hon, just talking about it! Feel how I got some strength back already. An hour ago I couldn't hold you like this."

"Oh, my darlin'!"

He sat up suddenly in bed and drew her into his arms and she laid her cheek against his, and in the silence, from the trundle crib beside them, the breathing of a child rose softly, fell softly.

"I—I blew us to a real Christmas, darlin', us and the kid. I—I couldn't help it. I couldn't bear to have her wake up without it, Harry, her and you—and me."

"A real Christmas, baby!"

"Red wine for you, darlin', like I brought you last Tuesday night and warmed you up so nice. The kind the doctor says is so grand for you, darlin'—red wine without bubbles like he says you gotta have."

"Red wine!"

"Yeh, and black grapes like I brought you last Tuesday, and like he says you oughtta have—black grapes and swell fruit that's good for you, darlin'."

"A real blow-out, Vi-dee."

"A bear for the kid, Harry!"

"Vi!"

"Yeh, a real brown grizz, with the grin and all, like she cried for in the window that Sunday—a real big brown one with the grin and all."

"That cost a real bunch of money, sweet!"

"Yeh, I blew me like sixty for it, hon, but she cried for it that Sunday and she had to have a Christmas, didn't she, darlin', even if she is too little. It—it would 'a' broke my heart to have her wake up to-morrow without one."

He regarded her through the glaze of tears. "My little kiddo!"

'"S-s-s-s-h!"

"It just don't seem fair for you to have to—"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Everything's fair, darlin', in love and war. All the rules for the game of living ain't written down—the Eleventh Commandment and the Twelfth Commandment and the Ninth Commandment."

"My little kiddo!"

"To-morrow, Harry, to-morrow, Harry, we're going! South, darlin', where he says the sun is going to warm you through and through. To-morrow, darlin'!"

"The next day, sweetness. You're all worn out and to-morrow's Christmas, and—"

But the shivering took hold of her again, and when she pressed her hand over his mouth he could feel it trembling.

"To-morrow, darlin', to-morrow before eight. Every day counts. Promise me, darlin'. I—I just can't live if you don't. To-morrow before eight. Promise me, darlin'! Oh, promise me, darlin'!"

"Poor, tired little kiddo, to-morrow before eight, then, to-morrow before eight we go."

Her head relaxed.

"You're tired out, darlin'. Get to bed, baby. We got a big day to-morrow. We got a big day to-morrow, darlin'! Get to bed, Vi-dee."

"I wanna spread out her Christmas first, Harry. I want her to see it when she wakes up. I couldn't stand her not seem' it."

She scurried to the hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed she spread her gaudy wares: An iridescent rubber ball glowing with six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear standing upright, and with bead eyes and a grin.



T.B.

The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing or lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of crime are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it. Cadets, social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in God's sunshine and breathe God's air. Scarlet women turn over in wide beds and draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning. Gamblers curse the dawn.

But what of the literal underworld of the great city? What of the babes who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it? What of the Subway track-walker, purblind from gloom; the coal-stoker, whose fiery tomb is the boiler-room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a flight below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead Chinese; six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars of six-million-dollar corporations?

This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless streets run literal blood—the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars. But these are your problems and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength or the fear not to die rich. The babe's mother, who had never known else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.

Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store, did not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the air she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a pain, sharp as a hat-pin, entered between her shoulder-blades. But what of that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh upward with the musical glee of a bird.

There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and semiannual clearing-sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store. On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing long-sleeve, high-necked nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit underwear was supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her little pink-knitted jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and shivered—shivered, but smiled. "Br-r-r! October never used to get under my skin like this."

Hattie Krakow, room-mate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird—downward, rather, until it died in a croak in her throat. But then Hattie Krakow was ten years older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.

"Gee! you're as funny as your own funeral, you are! You keep up the express pace you're going and there won't be another October left on your calendar."

"That's right; cheer me up a bit, dearie. What's the latest style in undertaking?"

"You'll know sooner 'n me if—"

"Aw, Hat, cut it! Wasn't I home in bed last night by eleven?"

"I ain't much on higher mathematics."

"Sure I was. I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that's how hard you was sleeping."

"A girl can't gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not pay up for it. I've seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken. I—"

"Amen!"

Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points of light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips trembled to laugh.

"There ain't nothing funny, Sara."

"Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!"

"If I was a girl and had a cough like I've seen enough in this basement get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big, and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning—I wouldn't just laugh and laugh. I'd cry a little—I would."

"That's right, Hat; step on the joy bug like it was a spider. Squash it!"

"I wouldn't just laugh and laugh, and put my lunch money on my back instead of eggs and milk inside of me, and run round all hours to dance-halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."

"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"

"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and—"

"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"

"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."

"Aw, Hat!"

"I 'ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I got enough sense to live along decent."

"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."

"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to keep her health down here, even when she does live along decent like me, eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie did?"

"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my teeth, ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."

"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your senses."

"T.B.?"

"Yes, T.B."

"Who's he?"

"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B. was what I said—T.B."

"Honest, Hat, I dun'no'—"

"For Heaven's sake! Too Berculosis is the way the exhibits and the newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."

"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too Berculosis! Hat, you—you don't—"

"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that—only I wanna scare you up a little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can make friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."

Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow spit—curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee! you oughtta be writing scare heads for the Evening Gazette!"

Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold a marked-down flannelette petticoat.

"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind. Oh, lud! There he starts now—that quickstep dance again!"

A quick red ran up into Miss Juke's hair, and she inclined forward in the attitude of listening.

"The silly! Honest, ain't he the silly? He said he was going to play that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together and all. Aw, I thought he'd forget. Ain't he the silly—remembering me?"

The red flowed persistently higher.

"Silly ain't no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and polished hair; and—"

"You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What's it to you if—"

"Nothing—except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the basement. Honest, I'm going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I'd hate to tell you how unpopular popular music is with me."

"Huh! You couldn't play on a side-comb, much less play on the piano like Charley does. If I didn't have no more brains than some people—honest, I'd go out and kill a calf for some!"

"You oughtta talk! A girl that 'ain't got no more brains than to gad round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged dance-halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing galoshes, and cheese-cloth waists that ain't even decent, instead of wool undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains—you and Charley Chubb!"

"Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don't like my doings, Hattie Krakow, there ain't no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for myself ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy's, and I ain't going to begin being bossed now. If you don't like my keeping steady with Charley Chubb—if you don't like his sheet-music playing—you gotta lump it! I'm a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate; if—"

"Sara Juke, ain't you ashamed!"

"I'm a good girl, I am; and there ain't nobody can cast a reflection on—on—"

Tears trembled in her voice, and she coughed from the deep recesses of her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering and her throat swelling with sobs.

"I—I'm a good girl, I am."

"Aw, Sara, don't I know it? Ain't that just where the rub comes? Don't I know it? If you wasn't a good girl would I be caring?"

"I'm a good girl, I am!"

"It's your health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a mustard plaster on your chest."

"Didn't I take the iron tonic and spoil my teeth?"

"My sister Lizzie—that's the way she started, Sara; right down here in this basement. There never was a prettier little queen down here. Ask any of the old girls. Like you in looks and all; full of vim, too. That's the way she started, Sara. She wouldn't get out in the country on Sundays or get any air in her lungs walking with me evenings. She was all for dance-halls, too, Sara. She—she—'Ain't I told you about her over and over again? 'Ain't I?"

"'Sh-h-h! Don't cry, Hat. Yes, yes; I know. She was a swell little kid; all the old girls say so. 'Sh-h-h!"

"The—the night she died I—I died, too; I—"

"'Sh-h-h, dearie!"

"I ain't crying, only—only I can't help remembering."

"Listen! That's the new hit Charley's playing—'Up to Snuff!' Say, 'ain't that got some little swing to it? Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m! Some little quickstep, ain't it? How that boy reads off by sight! Looka, will you? They got them left-over ribbed undervests we sold last season for forty-nine cents out on the grab table for seventy-four. Looka the mob fighting for 'em! Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m!"

The day's tide came in. Slowly at first, but toward noon surging through aisles and around bins, up-stairs and down-stairs—in, around, and out. Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an agglomeration of discords—the indescribable roar of humanity, which is like an army that approaches but never arrives. And above it all, insistent as a bugle-note, reaching the basement's breadth, from hardware to candy, from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice of the piano—gay, rollicking.

At five o'clock the patch of daylight above the red-lighted exit door turned taupe, as though a gray curtain had been flung across it; and the girls, with shooting pains in their limbs, braced themselves for the last hour. Shoppers, their bags bulging and their shawls awry, fumbled in bins for a last remnant; hatless, sway-backed women, carrying children, fought for mill ends. Sara Juke stood first on one foot and then on the other to alternate the strain; her hands were hot and dry as flannel, but her cheeks were pink—very pink.

At six o'clock Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid into a warm, gray jacket.

"Ready, Sara?"

"Yes, Hat." But her voice came vaguely, as through fog.

"I'm going to fix us some stew to-night with them onions Lettie brought up to the room when she moved—mutton stew, with a broth for you, Sara."

"Yes, Hat."

Sara's eyes darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke-bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and with obvious subterfuge slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not her own.

"Coming, Sara?"

"Wait, can't you? My—my hat ain't on right."

"Come on; you're dolled up enough."

"My—my gloves—I—I forgot 'em. You—you can go on, Hat." And she burrowed back beneath the counter.

Miss Krakow let out a snort, as fiery with scorn as though flames were curling on her lips. "Hanging round to see whether he's coming, ain't you? To think they shot Lincoln and let him live! Before I'd run after any man living, much less the excuse of a man like him! A shiny-haired, square-faced little rat like him!"

"I ain't, neither, waiting. I guess I have a right to find my gloves. I—I guess I gotta right. He's as good as you are, and better. I—I guess I gotta right." But the raspberry red of confusion dyed her face.

"No, you ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me now, like you ought to."

"I—You go on! I gotta tell him something. I guess I'm my own boss. I have to tell him something."

Miss Krakow folded her well-worn hand-bag under one arm and fastened her black cotton gloves.

"Pf-f-f! What's the use of wasting breath?"

She slipped into the flux of the aisle, and the tide swallowed her and carried her out into the bigger tide of the street and the swifter tide of the city—a flower on the current, her blush withered under the arc-light substitution for sunlight, the petals of her youth thrown to the muddy corners of the city streets.

Sara Juke breathed inward, and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips would quiver into a smile.

"Hello, Charley!"

"Hello yourself, Sweetness!" And, draping himself across the white-goods counter in an attitude as intricate as the letter S, behold Mr. Charley Chubb! Sleek, soap-scented, slim—a satire on the satyr and the haberdasher's latest dash. "Hello, Sweetness!"

"How are you, Charley?"

"Here, gimme your little hand. Shake."

She placed her palm in his, quivering.

You of the classes, peering through lorgnettes into the strange world of the masses, spare that shrug. True, when Charley Chubb's hand closed over Sara Juke's she experienced a flash of goose flesh; but, you of the classes, what of the Van Ness ball last night? Your gown was low, so that your neck rose out from it like white ivory. The conservatory, where trained clematis vines met over your heads, was like a bower of stars; music, his hand, the white glove off, over yours; the suffocating sweetness of clematis blossoms; a fountain throwing fine spray; your neck white as ivory, and—what of the Van Ness ball last night?

Only Sara Juke played her poor little game frankly, and the cards of her heart lay on the counter.

"Charley!" Her voice lay in a veil.

"Was you getting sore, Sweetness?"

"All day you didn't come over."

"Couldn't, Sweetness. Did you hear me let up on the new hit for a minute?"

"It's swell, though, Charley; all the girls was humming it. You play it like lightning, too."

"It must have been written for you, Sweetness. That's what you are, Up to Snuff, eh, Queenie?" He leaned closer, and above his tall, narrow collar dull red flowed beneath the sallow, and his long, white teeth and slick-brushed hair shone in the arc-light. "Eh, Queenie?"

"I gotta go now, Charley. Hattie's waiting home for me." She attempted to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with a hesitation that belied her. "I—I gotta go, Charley."

He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair, and slid his arm into hers.

"Forget it! But I had you going, didn't I, sister? Thought I'd forgot about to-night, didn't you, and didn't have the nerve to pipe up? Like fun I forgot!"

"I didn't know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all. I thought maybe your friend didn't give you the tickets like he promised."

"Didn't he? Look! See if he didn't!"

He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice:

HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP SUPPER WARDROBE FREE ADMIT GENT AND LADY FIFTY CENTS

"Oh, gee, Charley! And me such a sight in this old waist and all. I didn't know there was supper, too."

"Sure! Hurry, Sweetness, and we'll catch a Sixth Avenue car. We wanna get in on it while the tamales are hot."

She grasped his arm closer, and straightening her velveteen poke-bonnet so that the curls lay pat, together they wormed through the sidewalk crush; once or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain drawn upward from a deep well.

"Gee! I bet there'll be a jam!"

"Sure! There's some live crowd down there."

They were in the street-car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth. Around Sara Juke's slim waist lay Charley Chubb's saving arm, and with each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.

"Gee! ain't it the limit? It's a wonder they wouldn't open a window in this car!"

"Nix on that. Whatta you wanna do—freeze a fellow out?"

Her eyes would betray her. "Any old time I could freeze you, Charley."

"Honest?"

"You're the one that freezes me all the time. You're the one that keeps me guessing and guessing where I stand with you."

A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.

"Come, Sweetness, this is our corner. Quit your coughing, there, hon; this ain't no T.B. hop we're going to."

"No what?"

"Come along; hurry! Look at the crowd already."

"This ain't no—what did you say, Charley?"

But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance of the hall. More lurching, crowding, jamming.

"I'll meet you inside, kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino; red's my color."

"A red one? Gee! Looka; mine's got black pompons on it. Five minutes, Charley five minutes!"

Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their buckets, bottles of beer and soda-water, was spread on a long picnic-table running the entire length of the balcony.

The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with dancers.

After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath a sucy half-mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as a satyr's and whose smile was as upturned as the eye-slits in his mask.

"Gee! Charley, you look just like a devil in that costume—all red, and your mouth squinted like that!"

"And you look just like a little red cherry, ready to bust."

And they were off in the whirl of the dance, except that the close-packed dancers hemmed them in a swaying mob; and once she fell back against his shoulder, faint.

"Ain't there a—a up-stairs somewheres, Charley, where they got air? All this jam and no windows open! Gee! ain't it hot? Let's go outside where it's cool—let's."

"There you go again! No wonder you got a cold on you—always wanting air on you! Come, Sweetness; this ain't hot. Here, lemme show you the dip I get the girls crazy with. One, two, three—dip! One, two, three—dip! Ugh!"

"Gee! ain't it a jam, though?"

"One, two, three!"

"That's swell, Charley! Quit! You mustn't squeeze me like that till—till you've asked me to be engaged, Charley. We—we ain't engaged yet, are we, Charley?"

"Aw, what difference does that make? You girls make me sick—always wanting to know that."

"It—it makes a lot of difference, Charley."

"There you go on that Amen talk again. All right, then; I won't squeeze you no more, stingy!"

Her step was suddenly less elastic and she lagged on his arm. "I—I never said you couldn't, Charley. Gee! ain't you a great one to get mad so quick! Touchy! I only said not till we're engaged."

He skirted the crowd, guiding her skilfully. "Stingy! Stingy! I know 'em that ain't so stingy as you."

"Charley!"

"What?"

"Aw, I'm ashamed to say it."

"Listen! They're playing the new one—'Up to Snuff!' Faster! Don't make me drag you, kiddo. Faster!"

They were suddenly in the center of the maze, as tight-packed as though an army had conspired to close round them. She coughed, and in her effort of repression, coughed again.

"Charley, I—honest, I—I'm going to keel. I—I can't stand it packed in here—like this."

She leaned to him, with the color drained out of her face; and the crowd of black and pink and red dominoes, gnomes gone mad, pressed, batted, surged.

"Look out, Sweetness! Don't give out in here! They'll crush us out. 'Ain't you got no nerve? Here; don't give out now! Gee! Watch out, there! The lady's sick. Watch out! Here; now sit down a minute and get your wind."

He pressed her shoulders downward and she dropped whitely on a little camp-chair hidden underneath the balcony.

"I gotta get out, Charley; I gotta get out and get air. I feel like I'm going to suffocate in here. It's this old cough takes the breath out of me."

In the foyer she revived a bit and drank gratefully of the water he brought; but the color remained out of her cheeks and the cough would rack her.

"I guess I oughtta go home, Charley."

"Aw, cut it! You ain't the only girl I've seen give out. Sit here and rest a minute and you'll be all right. Great Scott! I came here to dance."

She rose to her feet a bit unsteadily, but smiling. "Fussy! Who said I didn't?"

"That's more like it."

And they were off again to the lilt of the music, but, struggle as she would, the coughing and the dizziness and the heat took hold of her, and at the close of the dance she fainted quietly against his shoulder.

When she finally caught at consciousness, as it passed and repassed her befuddled mind, she was on the floor of the cloak-room, her head pillowed on the skirt of a pink domino.

"There, there, dearie; your young man's waiting outside to take you home."

"I—I'm all right!"

"Certainly you are. The heat done it. Here; lemme help you out of your domino."

"It was the heat done it."

"There; you're all right now. I gotta get back to my dance. You fainted right up against him, dearie; and I seen you keel."

"Gee! ain't I the limit!"

"Here; lemme help on with your coat. Right there he is, waiting."

In the foyer Sara Juke met Charley Chubb shamefacedly. "I spoilt everything, didn't I?"

"I guess you couldn't help it. All right?"

"Yes, Charley." She met the air gratefully, worming her little hand into the curve of his elbow. "Gee! I feel fine now."

"Come; here's a car."

"Let's walk up Sixth Avenue, Charley; the air feels fine."

"All right."

"You ain't sore, are you, Charley? It was so jammed dancing, anyway."

"I ain't sore."

"It was the heat done it."

"Yeh."

"Honest, it's grand to be outdoors, ain't it? The stars and—and chilliness and—and—all!"

"Listen to the garden stuff!"

"Silly!" She squeezed his arm, and drew back, shamefaced.

His spirits rose. "You're a right loving little thing when you wanna be."

They laughed in duet; and before the plate-glass window of a furniture emporium they paused to regard a monthly-payment display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting-room, parlor, and dining-room of the home felicitous—a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling and waxen, in rocking-chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on the floor, completing the picture.

"Gee! it looks as snug as a bug in a rug! Looka what it says too: 'You Get the Girl; We'll Do the Rest!' Some little advertisement, ain't it? I got the girl all right—'ain't I, hon?"

"Aw!"

"Look at the papa—slippers and all! And the kid! Look at the kid, Sweetness."

Her confusion nearly choked her and her rapid breath clouded the window-glass. "Yeh, Charley! Looka the little kid! Ain't he cute?"

An Elevated train crashed over their heads, drowning out her words; but her smile, which flickered like light over her face, persisted and her arm crept back into his. At each shop window they lingered, but the glow of the first one remained with her.

"Look, Sweetness—'Red Swag, the Train King! Performance going on now.' Wanna go in?"

"Not to-night. Let's stay outside."

"Anything your little heart de-sires."

They bought hot chestnuts, city harbingers of autumn, from a vender, and let fall the hulls as they walked. They drank strawberry ice-cream soda, pink with foam. Her resuscitation was complete; his spirits did not wane.

"I gotta like a queen pretty much not to get sore at a busted evening like this. It's a good thing the ticket didn't cost me nothing."

"Ain't it, though?"

"Look! What's in there—a exhibit?"

They paused before a white-lighted store-front, and read, laboriously:

FREE TUBERCULOSIS EXHIBIT

TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE HOW TO PREVENT CONSUMPTION

"Oh!" She dragged at his arm.

"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."

"Let's—let's go in. See, it's free. Looka! it's all lit up and all; see, pictures and all."

"Say, ain't I enough of a dead one without dragging me in there? Free! I bet they pinch you for something before you get out."

"Come on, Charley. I never did see a place like this."

"Aw, they're all over town."

He followed her in surlily enough and then, with a morbid interest, round a room hung with photographs of victims in various emaciated stages of the white plague.

"Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful? Ain't it awful? Read them symptoms. Almost with nothing it—it begins. Night—sweats and losing weight and coughing, and—oh—"

"Look! Little kids and all! Thin as matches."

"Aw, see, a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh! that old man! Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the tobacco—factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it says; dirty saloons and dance-halls—weak lungs can't stand them."

"Let's get out of here."

"Aw, look! How pretty she is in this first picture; and look at her here—nothing but a stack of bones on a stretcher. Aw! Aw!"

"Come on!"

"Courage is very important, it says. Consumptives can be helped and many are cured. Courage is—"

"Come on; let's get out of this dump. Say, it's a swell night for a funeral."

She grasped at his coat sleeve, pinching the flesh with it, and he drew away half angrily.

"Come on, I said."

"All right!"

A thin line filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's length. She read, with a gasp in her throat:

1. Ten thousand people died from tuberculosis in the city of New York last year.

2. Two hundred thousand people died from tuberculosis in the United States last year.

3. Records of the Health Department show 31,631 living cases of tuberculosis in the city of New York.

4. Every three minutes some one in the United States dies from consumption.

"Oh, Charley, ain't it awful!"

At a desk a young man, with skin as pink as though a strong wind had whipped it into color, distributed pamphlets to the outgoing visitors—a thin streamlet of them; some cautious, some curious, some afraid.

"Come on; let's hurry out of here, Sweetness. My lung's hurting this minute."

They hurried past the desk; but the young man with the clear, pink skin reached over the heads of an intervening group, waving a long printed booklet toward the pair.

"Circular, missy?"

Sara Juke straightened, with every nerve in her body twanging like a plucked violin-string, and her eyes met the clear eyes of the young clerk.

Like a doll automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs were trembling so she could scarcely stand.

"Gotta hand it to you, Sweetness. Even made a hit on the fellow in the lung-shop! He didn't hand me out no literachure. Some little hit!"

"I gotta go home now, Charley."

"It's only ten."

"I better go, Charley. It ain't Saturday night."

At the stoop of her rooming-house they lingered. A honey-colored moon hung like a lantern over the block-long row of shabby-fronted houses. On her steps and to her fermenting fancy the shadow of an ash-can sprawled like a prostrate human being.

"Charley!" She clutched his arm.

"Whatcha scared about, Sweetness?"

"Oh, Charley, I—I feel creepy to-night."

"That visit to the morgue was enough to give anybody the blind staggers."

Her pamphlet was tight in her hand. "You ain't mad at me, Charley?"

He stroked her arm, and the taste of tears found its way to her mouth.

"I'm feeling so silly-like to-night, Charley."

"You're all in, kiddo." In the shadow he kissed her.

"Charley, you—you mustn't, unless we're—engaged." But she could not find the strength to unfold herself from his arms. "You mustn't, Charley!"

"Great little girl you are, Sweetness—one great little girl!"

"Aw, Charley!"

"And, to show you that I like you, I'm going to make up for this to-morrow night. A real little Saturday-night blow! And don't forget Sunday afternoon—two o'clock for us, down at Crissey's Hall. Two o'clock."

"Two o'clock."

"Good!"

"Oh, Charley, I—"

"What, Sweetness?"

"Oh, nothing; I—I'm just silly to-night."

Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and he kissed her again, scorching her lips.

"Good night, Sweetness."

"Good night, Charley."

Then up three flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with the moonlight flowing in.

Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps—a woman's blouse was flung across the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the bed in the attitude of walking—tired-looking shoes, run down at the heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.

Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her straight-falling nightdress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed lightly, scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm-clock ticked with emphasis.

An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow. Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her nightrobe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down! Put—it—down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with her mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold perspiration.

"Oh—oh—Hattie! Oh—oh!"

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her. The moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her in—the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream and Reality visits the couch.

Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night-sweat.

Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too weary to follow her mind's dictate.

"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"

"N-nothing."

"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"

"N-nothing."

* * * * *

In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree-branch tapping at the window an armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by day.

So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of the Titanic Store, the morning following, her laughter was ready enough. But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue.

Down one block—two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow store-front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and with a red cross blazoning above the doorway. And Sara Juke, whose heart was full of fear, faltered, entered.

The same thin file passed round the room, halting, sauntering, like grim visitors in a grim gallery. At a front desk a sleek young interne, tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed glasses.

Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.

Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears. Once, when she passed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded her with a warming glance of recognition.

"Hello!" he said. "You back?"

"Yes." Her voice was the thin cry of quail.

"You must like our little picture-gallery, eh?"

"Oh! Oh!" She caught at the edge of his desk, and tears lay heavy in her eyes.

"Eh?"

"Yes; I—I like it. I wanna buy it for my yacht." Her ghastly simulacrum of a jest died in her throat; and he said, quickly, a big blush suffusing his face:

"I was only fooling, missy. You 'ain't got the scare, have you?"

"The scare?"

"Yes; the bug? You ain't afraid you've ate the germ, are you?"

"I—I dun'no'."

"Pshaw! There's a lot of 'em comes in here more scared than hurt, missy. Never throw a scare till you've had a examination. For all you know, you got hay fever, eh! Hay fever!" And he laughed as though to salve his words.

"I—I got all them things on the red-printed list, I tell you. I—I got 'em all, night-sweats and all. I—I got 'em."

"Sure you got 'em, missy; but that don't need to mean nothing much."

"I got 'em, I tell you."

"Losing weight?"

"Feel."

He inserted two fingers in her waistband. "Huh!"

"You a doctor?"

He performed a great flourish. "I ain't in the profesh, missy. I'm only chief clerk and bottle-washer round here; but—"

"Where is the doctor? That him reading down there? Can I ask him? I—Oh! Ain't I scared!"

He placed his big, cool hand over her wrist and his face had none of its smile. "I know you are, little missy. I seen it in you last night when you and—and—"

"My—my friend."

"—your friend was in here. There's thousands come in here with the scare on, and most of 'em with a reason; but I picked you out last night from the gang. Funny thing, but right away I picked you. 'A pretty little thing like her'—if you'll excuse me for saying it—'a pretty little thing like her,' I says to myself. 'And I bet she 'ain't got nobody to steer her!'"

"Honest, did you?"

"Gee! it ain't none of my put-in; but when I seen you last night—funny thing—but when I seen you, why, you just kinda hit me in the eye; and, with all that gang round me, I says to myself: 'Gee! a pretty little thing like her, scared as a gazelle, and so pretty and all; and no one to give her the right steer!'"

"Aw, you seen me?"

"Sure! Wasn't it me reached out the pamphlet to you? You had on that there same cutey little hat and jacket and all."

"Does it cost anything to talk to the doctor down there?"

"Forget it! Go right down and he'll give you a card to the Victoria Clinic. I know them all over there and they'll look you over right, little missy, and steer you. Aw, don't be scared; there ain't nothing much wrong with you—maybe a sore spot, that's all. That cough ain't a double-lunger. You run over to the clinic."

"I gotta go back to the store now."

"After store, then?"

"Free?"

"Sure! Old Doc Strauss is on after five, too. If I ain't too nervy I'm off after six myself. I could meet you after and we could talk over what he tells you—if I ain't too nervy?"

"I—"

"Blaney's my name—Eddie Blaney. Ask anybody round here about me. I—I could meet you, little missy, and—"

"I can't to-night, Mr. Blaney. I gotta go somewheres."

"Aw!"

"I gotta."

"To-morrow? To-morrow's Sunday, little missy. There's a swell lot of country I bet you 'ain't never seen, and Old Doc Strauss is going to tell you to get acquainted with it pretty soon."

"Country?"

"Yes. That's what you need—outdoors; that's what you need. You got a color like all indoors—pretty, but putty."

"You—you don't think there's nothing much the matter with me, do you, Mr. Blaney?"

"Sure I don't. Why, I got a bunch of Don'ts for you up my sleeve that'll color you up like drug-store daub."

Tears and laughter trembled in her voice. "You mean that the outdoor stuff will do it, Mr. Blaney?"

"That's the talk!"

"But you—you ain't the doctor."

"I ain't, but I 'ain't been deaf and dumb and blind round here for three years. I can pick 'em every time. You're taking your stitch in time. You 'ain't even got a wheeze in you. Why, I bet you 'ain't never seen red!"

"No!" she cried, with quick comprehension.

"Sure you 'ain't!"

More tears and laughter in her voice. "I'm going to-night, then—at six, Mr. Blaney."

"Good! And to-morrow? There's a lot of swell country and breathing-space round here I'd like to introduce you to. I bet you don't know whether Ingleside Woods is kindling or a breakfast food. Now do you?"

"No."

"Ever had a chigger on you?"

"Huh?"

"Ever sleep outdoors in a bag?"

"Say, whatta you think I am?"

"Ever seen the sun rise, or took the time to look up and see several dozen or a couple of thousand or so stars glittering all at once?"

"Aw, come off! We ain't doing team-work in vaudeville."

"Gee! wouldn't I like to take you out and be the first one to make you acquainted with a few of the things that are happening beyond Sixth Avenue—if I ain't too nervy, little missy?"

"I gotta go somewhere at two o'clock to-morrow afternoon, Mr.—Mr. Blaney; but I can go in the morning—if it ain't going to look like I'm a freshie."

"In the morning! Swell! But where—who—" She scribbled on a slip of paper and fluttered it into his hand. "Sara Juke! Some little name. Gee! I know right where you live. I know a lot of cases that come from round there. I used to live near there myself, round on Third Avenue. I'll call round at nine, little missy. I'm going to introduce you to the country, eh?"

"They won't hurt at the clinic, will they, Mr. Blaney? I'm losing my nerve again."

"Shame on a pretty little thing like you losing her nerve! Gee! I've seen 'em come in here all pale round the gills and with nothing but the whooping-cough. There was a little girl in here last week who thought she was ready for Arizona on a canvas bed; and it wasn't nothing but her rubber skirtband had stretched. Shame on you, little missy! Don't you get scared! Wait till you see what I'm going to show you out in the country to-morrow—leaves turning red and all. We're going to have a heart-to-heart talk out there—eh? A regular lung-to-lung talk!"

"Aw, Mr. Blaney! Ain't you killing!" She hurried down the room, laughing.

* * * * *

At Sharkey's on Saturday night the entire basement cafe and dance-hall assumed a hebdomadal air of expectancy; extra marble-topped tables were crowded about the polished square of dancing-space; the odor of hops and sawdust and cookery hung in visible mists over the bar.

Girls, with white faces and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at tables or tete-a-tete with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank with keener appetite.

A self-playing piano performed beneath a large painting of an undraped Psyche; a youth with yellow fingers sang of Love. A woman whose shame was gone acquired a sudden hysteria at her lone table over her milky-green drink, and a waiter hustled her out none too gently.

In the foyer at seven o'clock Sara Juke met Charley Chubb, and he slid up quite frankly behind her and kissed her on the lips. At Sharkey's a miss is as good as her kiss!

"You—you quit! You mustn't!"

She sprang back, quivering, her face cold-looking and blue; and he regarded her with his mouth quirking.

"Huh! Hoity-toity, ain't you? Hoity-toity and white-faced and late, all at once, ain't you? Say, them airs don't get across with me. Come on! I'm hungry."

"I didn't mean to yell, Charley—only you scared me. I thought maybe it was one of them fresh guys that hang round here; all of 'em look so dopey and all. I—You know I never was strong for this place, Charley."

"Beginning to nag, are you?"

"No, no, Charley. No, no!"

They drew up at a small table.

"No fancy keeling act to-night, kiddo. I ain't taking out a hospital ward, you know. Gad! I like you, though, when you're white-looking like this! Why'd you dodge me at noon to-day and to-night after closing? New guy? I won't stand for it, you know, you little white-faced Sweetness, you!"

"I hadda go somewheres, Charley. I came near not coming to-night, neither, Charley."

"What'll you eat?"

"I ain't hungry."

"Thirsty, eh?"

"No."

He regarded her over the rim of the smirchy bill of fare. "What are you, then, you little white-faced, big-eyed devil?"

"Charley, I—I got something to—to tell you. I—"

"Bring me a lamb stew and a beer, light. What'll you have, little white-face?"

"Some milk and—"

"She means with suds on, waiter."

"No—no; milk, I said—milk over toast. Milk toast—I gotta eat it. Why don't you lemme talk, Charley? I gotta tell you."

He was suddenly sober. "What's hurting you? One milk toast, waiter. Tell them in the kitchen the lady's teeth hurt her. What's up, Sweetness?" And he leaned across the table to imprint a fresh kiss on her lips.

"Don't—don't—don't! For Gawd's sake, don't!"

She covered her face with her hands; and such a trembling seized her that they fell pitifully away again and showed her features, each distorted. "You mustn't, Charley! Mustn't do that again, not—not for three months—you—you mustn't."

He leaned across the table; his voice was like sleet—cold, thin, cutting: "What's the matter—going to quit?"

"No—no—no!"

"Got another guy you like better?"

"Oh! Oh!"

"A queenie can't quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can't quit me first and get away with it. Ask 'em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain't going to be you. What's the matter? Out with it!"

"Charley, it ain't that—I swear it ain't that!"

"What's hurting you, then?"

"I gotta tell you. We gotta go easy for a little while. We gotta quit doing the rounds for a while till—only for a little while. Three months he said would fix me. A grand old doc he was!

"I been to the clinic, Charley. I hadda go. The cough—the cough was cutting me in two. It ain't like me to go keeling like I did. I never said much about it; but, nights and all, the sweats and the cough and the shooting pains was cutting me in two. We gotta go easy for a while, Charley; just—"

"You sick, Sara?" His fatty-white face lost a shade of its animation. "Sick?"

"But it ain't, Charley. On his word he promised it ain't! A grand old doc, with whiskers—he promised me that. I—I am just beginning; but the stitch was in time. It ain't a real case yet, Charley. I swear on my mother's curl of hair it ain't."

"Ain't what? Ain't what?"

"It ain't! Air, he said, right living—early hours and all. I gotta get out of the basement. He'll get me a job. A grand old man! Windows open; right living. No—no dancing and all, for a while, Charley. Three months only, Charley; and then—"

"What, I say—"

"It ain't, Charley! I swear it ain't. Just one—the left one—a little sore down at the base—the bottom. Charley, quit looking at me like that! It ain't a real case—it ain't; it ain't!"

"It ain't what?"

"The—the T.B. Just the left one; down at—"

"You—you—" An oath as hot as a live coal dropped from his lips, and he drew back, strangling. "You—you got it, and you're letting me down easy. You got it, and it's catching as hell! You got it, you white devil, and—and you're trying to lie out of it—you—you—"

"Charley! Charley!"

"You got it, and you been letting me eat it off your lips! You devil, you! You devil, you! You devil, you!"

"Charley, I—"

"I could kill you! Lemme wash my mouth! You got it; and if you got it I got it! I got it! I got it! I—I—"

He rushed from the table, strangling, stuttering, staggering; and his face was twisted with fear.

For an hour she sat there, waiting, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes growing larger in her face. The dish of stew took on a thin coating of grease and the beer died in the glass. The waiter snickered. After a while she paid for the meal out of her newly opened wage-envelope and walked out into the air.

Once on the street, she moaned audibly into her handkerchief. There is relief in articulation. Her way lay through dark streets where figures love to slink in the shadows. One threw a taunt at her and she ran. At the stoop of her rooming-house she faltered, half fainting and breathing deep from exhaustion, her head thrown back and her eyes gazing upward.

Over the narrow street stars glittered, dozens and myriads of them.

* * * * *

Literature has little enough to say of the heartaches and the heartburns of the Sara Jukes and the Hattie Krakows and the Eddie Blaneys. Medical science concedes them a hollow organ for keeping up the circulation. Yet Mrs. Van Ness's heartbreak over the death of her Chinese terrier, Wang, claims a first-page column in the morning edition; her heartburn—a complication of midnight terrapin and the strain of her most recent role of corespondent—obtains her a suite de luxe in a private sanitarium.

Vivisectionists believe the dog is less sensitive to pain than man; so the social vivisectionists, in problem plays and best sellers, are more concerned with the heartaches and heartburns of the classes. But analysis would show that the sediment of salt in Sara Juke's and Mrs. Van Ness's tears is equal.

Indeed, when Sara Juke stepped out of the streetcar on a golden Sunday morning in October, her heart beat higher and more full of emotion than Mrs. Van Ness could find at that breakfast hour, reclining on her fine linen pillows, an electric massage and a four-dollars-an-hour masseuse forcing her sluggish blood to flow.

Eddie Blaney gently helped Sara to alight, cupping the point of her elbow in his hand; and they stood huddled for a moment by the roadway while the car whizzed past, leaving them in the yellow and ocher, saffron and crimson, countryside.

"Gee! Gee whiz!"

"See! I told you. And you not wanting to come when I called for you this morning—you trying to dodge me and the swellest Indian-summer Sunday on the calendar!"

"Looka!"

"Wait! We 'ain't started yet, if you think this is swell."

"Oh! Let's go over in them woods. Let's." Her lips were apart and pink crept into her cheeks, effacing the dark rims of pain beneath her eyes.

"Let's hurry."

"Sure; that's where we're going—right over in there, where the woods look like they're on fire; but, gee! this ain't nothing to the country places I know round here. This ain't nothing. Wait!"

The ardor of the inspired guide was his, and with each exclamation from her the joy of his task doubled itself.

"If you think this is great, wait—just you wait. Gee! if you like this, what would you have said to the farm? Wait till we get to the top of the hill."

Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and through the haze that is October's veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as an opal. A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting, exclaiming.

"I—Honest, Mr. Blaney, I—"

"Eddie!"

"Eddie, I—I never did feel so—I never was so—so—Aw, I can't say it." Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Sure you never was. I never was, neither, before—before—"

"Before what?"

"Before I had to."

"Had to?"

"Yeh; both of them. Bleeding all the time. Didn't see nothing but red for 'leven months."

"You!"

"Yeh; three years ago. Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me."

"You—so big and strong and all!"

He smiled at her and his teeth flashed. "Gad! little girl, if you got a right to be scared, whatta you think I had? I seen your card over at the clinic last night, and you 'ain't got no right to have that down-and-out look on you had this morning. If you think you got something to be scared at you looka my old card at the clinic some day; they keep it for show. You oughtta seen me the day I quit the shipping-room, right over at the Titanic, too, and then see whether you got something to be scared at."

"You—you used to work there?"

"Six years."

"I—I ain't scared no more, Eddie; honest, I ain't!"

"Gee! I should say not! They ain't even sending you up to the farm."

"No, no! They're going to get me a job. A regular outdoor, on-the-level kind of a job. A grand old doc, with whiskers! I ain't a regular one, Eddie; just the bottom of one lung don't make a regular one."

"Well, I guess not, poor little missy. Well, I guess not."

"Three months, he said, Eddie. Three months of right living like this, and air and all, and I'll be as round as a peach, he said. Said it hisself, without me asking—that's how scared I was. Round as a peach!"

"You can't beat that gang over there at the clinic, little missy. They took me out of the department when all the spring-water I knew about ran out of a keg. Even when they got me out on the farm—a grown-up guy like me—for a week I thought the crow in the rooster was a sidewalk faker. You can't beat that, little missy."

"He's a grand old man, with whiskers, that's going to get me the job. Then in three months I—"

"Three months nothing! That gang won't let you slip back after the three months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half a chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the shipping department in the subbasement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety dollars. Can you beat it? Ninety dollars would send all the shipping-clerks of the world off in a faint."

"Gee! it—it's swell!"

"And—"

"Look! Look!"

"Persimmons!" A golden mound of them lay at the base of a tree, piled up against the hole, bursting, brown. "Persimmons! Here; taste one. They're fine."

"Eat 'em?"

"Sure!"

She bit into one gently; then with appetite. "M-m-m! Good!"

"Want another?"

"M-m-m—my mouth! Ouch! My m-mouth!"

"Gee! you cute little thing, you! See, my mouth's the same way, too. Feels like a knot. Gee! you cute little thing, you—all puckered up and all."

And linking her arm in his they crunch-crunched over the brittle leaves and up a hillside to a plateau of rock overlooking the flaming country; and from the valley below smoke from burning mounds of leaves wound in spirals, its pungency drifting to them.

"See that tree there? It's a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger than this little thing."

"Quit your kidding!" But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly; and always unformed tears would gloze her eyes.

"Here, sit here, little lady. Wait till I spread this newspaper out. Gee! Don't I wish you didn't have to go back to the city by two o'clock, little lady! We could make a great day of it here, out in the country; lunch at a farm and see the sun set and all. Some day of it we could make if—"

"I—I don't have to go back, Eddie."

His face expanded into his widest smile. "Gee! that's great! That's just great!"

Silence.

"What you thinking of, little lady, sitting there so pretty and all?"

"N-nothing."

"Nothing? Aw, surely something!"

A tear formed and zigzagged down her cheek. "Nothing, honest; only I—I feel right happy."

"That's just how you oughtta feel, little lady."

"In three months, if—Aw, ain't I the nut?"

"It'll be a big Christmas, won't it, little missy, for both of us? A big Christmas for both of us; you as sound and round as a peach again, and me shooting up like a skyrocket on the pay-roll."

A laugh bubbled to her lips before the tear was dry. "In three months I won't be a T.B., not even a little bit."

"'Sh-h-h! On the farm we wasn't allowed to say even that. We wasn't supposed to even know what them letters mean."

"Don't you know what they mean, Eddie?"

"Sure I do!" He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers. "T.B.—True Blue—that's what they mean, little lady."

She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.



SUMMER RESOURCES

At seven o'clock the Seaside Hotel struggled into full dress—ladies emerged from siestas and curlpapers, dowagers wormed into straight fronts and spread the spousal vestments of boiled shirt, U-shaped waistcoat et al. across the bed. Slim young men in the swelter of their inside two-fifty-a-day rooms carefully extracted their braided-at-the-seams trousers from beneath the mattresses and removed trees from patent-leather pumps.

At seven-thirty young girls fluttered in and out from the dining-room like brilliant night moths, the straight-front dowagers, U-vested spouses, and slim young men in braided trousers seams crowded about the desk for the influx of mail, and read their tailor and modiste duns with the rapt and misleading expression that suggested a love rune rather than a "Please remit." Interested mothers elbowed for the most desirable veranda rockers; the blather of voices, the emph-umph-umph of the three-nights-a-week orchestra and the remote pound of the ocean joined in united effort.

At eight o'clock Miss Myra Sternberger yawned in her wicker rocker and raised two round and bare-to-the-elbow arms high above her head.

"Gee!" she said. "This place is so slow it gets on my nerves—it does!"

Mrs. Blondheim, who carried toast away from the breakfast-table concealed beneath a napkin for her daughter who remained abed until noon, paused in her Irish crochet, spread a lace wheel upon her ample knee, and regarded it approvingly.

"What you got to kick about, Miss Sternberger? Didn't I see you in the surf this morning with that shirtwaist drummer from Cincinnati?"

"Mr. Eckstein—oh, I been meetin' him down here in July for two years. He's a nice fellow an' makes a good livin'—but he ain't my style."

"Girls are too particular nowadays. Take my Bella—why, that girl's had chances you wouldn't believe! But she always says to me, she says, 'Mamma, I ain't goin' to marry till Mr. Right comes along.'"

"That's just the same way with me."

"My Bella's had chances—not one, but six. You can ask anybody who knows us in New York the chances that goil has had."

"I ain't in a hurry to take the first man that asks me, neither."

Mrs. Blondheim wrapped the forefinger of her left hand with mercerized cotton thread, and her needle flashed deftly.

"What about the little Baltimore fellow that went away yesterday? I seen he was keepin' you pretty busy."

"Aw, Mrs. Blondheim, can't a girl have a good time with a fellow without gettin' serious?"

But she giggled in pleased self-consciousness and pushed her combs into place—Miss Sternberger wore her hair oval about her face like Mona Lisa; her cheeks were pink-tinted, like the lining of a conch-shell.

"My Bella always says a goil can't be too careful at these here summer resorts—that's why she ain't out every night like some of these goils. She won't go out with a young man till she knows he comes from nice people."

Miss Sternberger patted the back of her hand against her mouth and stifled a yawn.

"One thing I must say for my Bella—no matter where I take that goil, everybody says what a nice, retirin' goil she is!"

"Bella does retire rather early," agreed Miss Sternberger in tones drippingly sweet.

"I try to make her rest up in summer," pursued Mrs. Blondheim, unpunctured. "You goils wear yourselves out—nothin' but beaus, beaus all the time. There ain't a night in New York that my Bella ain't out with some young man. I always say to her, 'Bella, the theayters ought to give you a commission.'"

Miss Sternberger rocked.

"Where did you say you live in New York, Miss Sternberger?"

"West One Hundred and Eleventh Street."

"Oh yes—are you related to the Morris Sternbergers in the boys'-pants business?"

"I think—on my father's side."

"Honest, now! Carrie Sternberger married my brother-in-law; and they're doin' grand, too! He's built up a fine business there. Ain't this a small woild after all!"

"It is that," agreed Miss Sternberger. "Why, last summer I was eatin' three meals a day next to my first cousin and didn't know it."

"Look!" said Mrs. Blondheim. "There's those made-up Rosenstein goils comin' out of the dinin'-room. Look at the agony they put on, would you! I knew 'em when they were livin' over their hair-store on Twenty-thoid Street. I wonder where my Bella is!"

"That's a stylish messaline the second one's got on, all right. I think them beaded tunics are swell."

"If it hadn't been for the false-hair craze old man Rosenstein wouldn't—"

Mrs. Blondheim leaned forward in her chair; her little flowered-silk work-bag dropped to the floor. "There's Bella now! Honest, that Mr. Arnheim 'ain't left her once to-day, and he only got here this morning, too! Such a fine young man, the clerk says; he's been abroad six months and just landed yesterday—and been with her all day. When I think of the chances that goil had. Why, Marcus Finberg, who was down here last week, was crazy about her!"

"Did you say that fellow's name was Arnheim?"

"Yes. 'Ain't you heard of the Arnheim models? He's a grand boy, the clerk says, and the swellest importer of ladies' wear in New York."

Miss Sternberger leaned forward in her chair. "Is that Simon Arnheim?"

"Sure. He's the one that introduced the hobble skoit. My Bella was one of the foist to wear one. There ain't a fad that he don't go over to Europe and get. He made a fortune off the hobble skoit alone."

"Is that so?"

"Believe me, if he wasn't all right my Bella wouldn't let him hang on that way."

"I've heard of him."

"I wish you could see that Babette Dreyfous eying my Bella! She's just green because Bella's got him."

"Do you use the double stitch in your crochet, Mrs. Blondheim? That's a pretty pattern you're workin' on."

"Yes. I've just finished a set of doilies you'd pay twenty-five dollars for anywhere."

Miss Sternberger rose languidly to her feet. "Well," she said, "I guess I'll take a stroll and go up to bed."

"Don't be so fidgety, Miss Sternberger; sit down by me and talk."

Miss Sternberger smiled. "I'll see you later, Mrs. Blondheim; and don't forget that preparation I was tellin' you about—Sloand's Mosquito Skit. Just rub the bottle stopper over your pillow and see if it don't work."