“I dunno, Babe.  The town’s mad with money, but I don’t feel myself going crazy with any of it.”

“What ud you bring us, honey?”

He slid out of his silk-lined greatcoat, placing his brown derby atop.

“Three guesses, Babe,” he said, rubbing his cold hands in a dry wash, and smiling from five feet eleven of sartorial accomplishment down upon her.

“Honey darlin’!” said Mrs. Connors, standing erect and placing her cheek against the third button of his waistcoat.

“Wow! how I love the woman!” he cried, closing his hands softly about her throat and tilting her head backward again.

“Darlin’, you hurt!”

“Br-r-r—­can’t help it!”

When Mr. Connors moved, he gave off the scent of pomade freely; his slightly thinning brown hair and the pointy tips to a reddish mustache lay sleek with it.  There was the merest suggestion of embonpoint to the waistcoat, but not so that, when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his russet shoes were not in evidence.  His pin-checked suit was pressed to a knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air of complete well-being about him.  Men can acquire that sort of eupeptic well-being in a Turkish bath.  Young mothers and life-jobbers have it naturally.

Suddenly, Mrs. Connors began to foray into his pockets, plunging her hand into the right, the left, then stopped suddenly, her little face flashing up at him.

“It’s round and furry—­my honeybunch brought me a peach!  Beau-ful pink peach in December!  Nine million dollars my hubby pays to bring him wifey a beau-ful pink peach.”  She drew it out—­a slightly runty one with a forced blush—­and bit small white teeth immediately into it.

“M-m-m!”—­sitting on the chaise-longue and sucking inward.  He sat down beside her, a shade graver.

“Is my babe disappointed I didn’t dig her coat and earrings out of hock?”

She lay against him.

“I should worry!”

“There just ain’t no squeal in my girl.”

“Wanna bite?”

“Any one of ’em but you would be hollering for their junk out of pawn.  But, Lord, the way she rigs herself up without it!  Where’d you dig up the spangles, Babe?  Gad!  I gotta take you out to-night and buy you the right kind of a dinner.  When I walks my girl into a cafe, they sit up and take notice, all righty.  Spangles she rigs herself up in when another girl, with the way my luck’s been runnin’, would be down to her shimmy-tail.”

She stroked his sleeve as if it had the quality of fur.

“Is the rabbit’s foot still kicking my boy?”

“Never seen the like, honey.  The cards just won’t come.  This afternoon I even played the wheel over at Chuck’s, and she spun me dirt.”

“It’s gotta turn, Blutch.”

“Sure!”

“Remember the run of rotten luck you had that year in Cincinnati, when the ponies was runnin’ at Latonia?”