“Y-aw,” said Miss Beemis.

The day dwindled.  Died.

At West Street, where Broadway intersects, the red sun at its far end settled redly and cleanly to sink like a huge coin into the horizon.  The Popular Store emptied itself into this hot pink glow, scurried for the open street-car and, oftener than not, the overstuffed rear platform, nose to nose, breath to breath.

Fortunately the Popular Store took its semi-annual inventory of yards and not of souls.  Such a stock-taking, that of the human hearts which beat from half after eight to six behind six floors of counters, would have revealed empty crannies, worn thin in places with the grind of routine.  The eight-thirty-to-six business of muslin underwear, crash toweling, and skirt-binding.  The great middle class of shoppers who come querulous with bunions and babies.  The strap-hanging homeward ride.  Supper, but usually within range of the range that boils it.  The same smells of the same foods.  The, cinematograph or front-stoop hour before bed.  Or, if Love comes, and he will not be gainsaid, a bit of wooing at the fountain—­the soda-fountain.  But even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a ready-tied tie.  As if that matters, and yet somehow, it does.  Leander wore none, or had he, would have worn it flowing.  Then bed, and the routine of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp.  An alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams.  Coffee within reach of the range.  Another eight-thirty-to-six reality of muslin underwearing, crash toweling, and skirt-binding.

But, not given to self-inventory, the Popular Store emptied itself with that blessed elasticity of spirit which, unappalled, stretches to to-morrows as they come.

At Ninth Street Miss Lola Hassiebrock loosed her arm where Miss Beemis had linked into it.  Wide-shouldered and flat-hipped, her checked suit so pressed that the lapels lay entirely flat to the swell of her bosom, her red sailor-hat well down over her brow, and the high, swathing cravat rising to inclose her face like a wimple, she was Fashion’s apotheosis in tailor-made mood.  When Miss Hassiebrock walked, her skirt, concealing yet revealing an inch glimmer of gray-silk stocking above gray-suede spats, allowed her ten inches of stride.  She turned now, sidestepping within those ten inches.

“See you to-morrow, Josie.”

“Ain’t you taking the car?”

“No, dearie,” said Miss Hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street; “you take it, but not for keeps.”

And so, walking southward on Ninth Street in a sartorial glory that was of her own making-over from last season, even St. Louis, which at the stroke of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as canons, turned its feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye.