They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a laughing hyena.  Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a stick in his hand.  She gushed, but so does Old Faithful.  Anyhow, the audience enjoyed her greatly.

At supper Mitchell secured parking space for his companion at the Union Cafe, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated by a woman.  During the debacle he fingered the money in his pocket, then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if it could be done.  Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not swoon; nor was he arrested.  Root-beer had been Mitchell’s main intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly: 

“Mitch, you’re the nickel-plated entertainer, and I’ll never miss another Monday eve unless I’m in the shops or the round-house.  You certainly have got class.”

At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told her just enough to excite her curiosity.

“Where were you last night?” she inquired.

“I went to a show.”

“Were the pictures good?”

“They don’t have pictures at the Grand.”

“Oh—­h!” The manicurist’s violet eyes opened wide.  “Louis—­you drank something.  You’re awful pale.  What was it?”

“Clicquot!  That’s my favorite brand.”

Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap.  After a moment she said:  “Maybe you’ll take me somewhere to-night.  We haven’t been out together for the longest time.”

“Oh, I see!  This is Gross’s night at the Maccabbees’, isn’t it?” Louis gloated brutally over her confusion.  “Sorry, but I’ll probably have to entertain some more customers.  The firm is keeping me busy.”

At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks; sixty per cent. of the city’s railroad business came to Comer & Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitchell as if he were an equal; even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while Murphy—­Louis no longer called him Mister—­increased his assistant’s expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter.  Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he passed the quotation clerk’s desk.

Nor were Louis’s customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap.  Phoebe Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue.  He gave them each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris.  But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon began to call the waiters at Rector’s by their given names, and a number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.