“I gotta go now, Charley.  Hattie’s waiting home for me.”  She attempted to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with a hesitation that belied her.  “I—­I gotta go, Charley.”

He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair, and slid his arm into hers.

“Forget it!  But I had you going, didn’t I, sister?  Thought I’d forgot about to-night, didn’t you, and didn’t have the nerve to pipe up?  Like fun I forgot!”

“I didn’t know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all.  I thought maybe your friend didn’t give you the tickets like he promised.”

“Didn’t he?  Look!  See if he didn’t!”

He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice: 

  HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP
  SUPPER WARDROBE FREE
  ADMIT GENT AND LADY FIFTY CENTS

“Oh, gee, Charley!  And me such a sight in this old waist and all.  I didn’t know there was supper, too.”

“Sure!  Hurry, Sweetness, and we’ll catch a Sixth Avenue car.  We wanna get in on it while the tamales are hot.”

She grasped his arm closer, and straightening her velveteen poke-bonnet so that the curls lay pat, together they wormed through the sidewalk crush; once or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain drawn upward from a deep well.

“Gee!  I bet there’ll be a jam!”

“Sure!  There’s some live crowd down there.”

They were in the street-car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth.  Around Sara Juke’s slim waist lay Charley Chubb’s saving arm, and with each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.

“Gee! ain’t it the limit?  It’s a wonder they wouldn’t open a window in this car!”

“Nix on that.  Whatta you wanna do—­freeze a fellow out?”

Her eyes would betray her.  “Any old time I could freeze you, Charley.”

“Honest?”

“You’re the one that freezes me all the time.  You’re the one that keeps me guessing and guessing where I stand with you.”

A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.

“Come, Sweetness, this is our corner.  Quit your coughing, there, hon; this ain’t no T.B. hop we’re going to.”

“No what?”

“Come along; hurry!  Look at the crowd already.”

“This ain’t no—­what did you say, Charley?”

But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance of the hall.  More lurching, crowding, jamming.

“I’ll meet you inside, kiddo, in five minutes.  Pick out a red domino; red’s my color.”

“A red one?  Gee!  Looka; mine’s got black pompons on it.  Five minutes, Charley five minutes!”

Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue hall.  An orchestra played beneath an arch of them.  Supper, consisting of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their buckets, bottles of beer and soda-water, was spread on a long picnic-table running the entire length of the balcony.