“Yeh.”

“Lost your shirt, hon, and the first day back in New York laid a hundred on the wheel and won me my seal coat.  You—­we—­We couldn’t be no lower than that time we got back from Latonia, hon?”

He laid his hand over hers.

“Come on, Babe.  Joe’ll be here directly, and then we’re going and blow them spangles to a supper.”

“Blutch, answer!”

“Now there’s nothin’ to worry about, Babe.  Have I ever landed anywhere but on my feet?  We’ll be driving a racer down Broadway again before the winter’s over.  There’s money in motion these wartimes, Babe.  They can’t keep my hands off it.”

“Blutch, how—­how much did you drop to-day?

“I could tell clear down on the street you lost, honey, the way you walked so round-shouldered.”

“What’s the difference, honey?  Come; just to show you I’m a sport, I’m going to shoot you and Joe over to Jack’s in one of them new white taxi-cabs.”

“Blutch, how much?”

“Well, if you gotta know it, they laid me out to-day, Babe.  Dropped that nine hundred hock-money like it was a hot potato, and me countin’ on bringin’ you home your coat and junk again to-night.  Gad!  Them cards wouldn’t come to me with salt on their tails.”

“Nine hundred!  Blutch, that—­that leaves us bleached!”

“I know it, hon.  Just never saw the like.  Wouldn’t care if it wasn’t my girl’s junk and fur coat.  That’s what hurts a fellow.  If there’s one thing he ought to look to, it’s to keep his wimmin out of the game.”

“It—­it ain’t that, Blutch; but—­but where’s it comin’ from?”

He struck his thigh a resounding whack.

“With seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine.  Why, before I had my babe for my own, many’s the time I was down to shoe-shine money.  Up to ’leven years ago it wasn’t nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a pool-table one night and de luxe the next.  If life was a sure thing for me, I’d ask ’em to put me out of my misery.  It’s only since I got my girl that I ain’t the plunger I used to be.  Big Blutch has got his name from the old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same size.”

She sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the fuzzy aura.

“Blutch, we—­we just never was down to the last seventy-five before.  That time at Latonia, it was a hundred and more.”

“Why, girl, once, at Hot Springs, I had to hock my coat and vest, and I got started on a run of new luck playin’ in my shirt-sleeves, pretending I was a summer boy.”

“That was the time you gave Lenny Gratz back his losings and got him back to his wife.”

“Right-o!  Seen him only to-night.  He’s traveling out of Cleveland for an electric house and has forgot how aces up looks.  That boy had as much chance in the game as a deacon.”