“There’s nothing or nobody in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and certainly not my ace-spot girl.  Turn your mind over, and telephone down for me to come out and pick you up about eight.”

“Don’t hit it up to-night, Charley.  Can’t you go home one evening?”

He juggled her arm.

“You’re a nice little girl, all righty.”

“There’s my car.”

He elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to drop a coin into the box.

“Take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don’t let your car skid.”

“Oh, Charley—­silly!”

She forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red sailor creating an area for her.

“S’long, Charley!”

“S’long, girl!”

Wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad back receding.  An inclination to cry pressed at her eyeballs.

Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a gas-mask to the face.

Opening the door upon the Hassiebrock front room, convertible from bed- to sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening.  Miss Hassiebrock entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops.

“Whew!”

“Lo-o, that you?”

“Yes, ma.”

“Come out to your supper.  I’ll warm up the kohlrabi.”

Miss Hassiebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portieres, with them swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk.  A table drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a litter of dishes.

“I wish to Heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front windows shut!”

Miss Ida Bell Hassiebrock, at the right of the table, turned her head so that, against the window, her profile, somewhat thin, cut into the gloom.

“There’s a lot of things I wish around here,” she said, without a ripple to her lips.

“Hello, ma!”

“I’ll warm up the kohlrabi, Loo.”

Mrs. Hassiebrock, in the green black of a cotton umbrella and as sparse of frame, moved around to the gas-range, scraping a match and dragging a pot over the blue flame.

“Never mind, ma; I ain’t hungry.”