She drew inward little breaths of shivery glee.  “I ain’t wet!  Say, whatta you think that fountain’s spouting—­gasoline?  I—­ain’t—­wet!  Looka my hair curling up like it does in a rain-storm!  Feel my skirt down here at the hem!  Can you beat it?  I ain’t wet, he says!”

“Here, drink this, Doll, and warm up.”

“No.”

She threw a dozen brilliant glances into the crowd, tossed an invitational nod to the group adjoining, and clapped her hands for the iridescent Christmas ball that dangled over their table.

“Here, send ’er over—­here, give you leave.  I’m some little catcher myself.”

It bounded to her light as air, and she caught it deftly, tossed it ceilingward until it bounced against an incandescent bulb, tossed it again, caught it lightly, nor troubled to heed the merry shouts for its return.

From across the room some one threw her a great trailing ribbon of gilt paper.  She bound it about her neck like a ruff.  A Christmas star with a fluted tissue-paper edge floated into her lap.  She wore it like an earring, waggling it slyly so that her curls were set a-bobbing.

“Gimme my bear.”

She hugged the woolly image to her as if she would beg its warmth, her teeth clicking the while with chill.

“Take a little swallow or two to warm you up, Doll!”

“Gee!  I took your dare, Jimmie—­and—­and—­br-r-r-r!”

“A little swallow, Doll!”

“I took your dare, Jimmie, and I—­I can feel my skirt shrinking up like it was rigging.  I—­I guess I’ll have to go to work next week in a sheet.”

“Didn’t I tell you I was backing this toot, sister?”

“I didn’t have no right to dive in there and spoil my duds, Jimmie.  I—­”

“Who had a better right?”

“Ain’t it just like a nut like me?  But I ’ain’t had a live time for so long I—­I lost my head.  But I ’ain’t got no right to spoil the only duds I got to my back.  Looka this waist; the color’s running.  I ought to—­I—­Oh, like I wasn’t in enough of a mess already without—­without—­acting the crazy nut!”

“Aw, Doll, cut the tragedy!  Didn’t I tell you I was going to blow you to anything your little heart desires?”

“But the only duds I got to my back, Jimmie!  Oh, ain’t I a nut when I get started, Jimmie!  Ain’t I a nut!”

She regarded him with tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her lips.  A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her smile broke out into sunshine.

“Ain’t I a nut, though!”

“You’re a real, full-blooded little winner, that’s what you are, and you can’t say I ain’t one, neither, Doll.  Here’s your damages.  Now go doll yourself up like a Christmas tree!”

He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to the floor.

“I—­Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am?  There, take your money.  I—­honest, I—­What kind of a girl do you think I am?”