“If I thought Ray would help mamma; but she’s got a grouch on and—­”

“Sure she will!  Gee! what’s the fun meeting a girl you think you’re going to like if she won’t do one little thing for a fellow!  You bet it ain’t every girl I’d beg like this.  Whoops, I could just rip things open to-day!” It was as if he felt his life in every limb.  “Come on, Miss Miriam, be a sport!  Come on!”

“I—­I oughtn’t to.”

“That’s what makes it all the more fun.”

Her eyes were so dark, so like pools!  They met his with a smile clear through to their depths.  “Well, maybe, but—­but just for a little while.”

“Just a little while.”

“I—­I oughtn’t.”

“You ought.”

“Well, just this once.”

“Sure, just this once.”  He linked his arm in hers.

“I—­I—­”

“Gee!” he said, “you’re a girl after my own heart!”

On the Elevated train the windows were lowered to the first inrush of spring, and when they left the city behind them came the first green smells of open field and bursting bud.

“Now are you sorry you came, little Miss Miriam?”

She bared her head to the rush of breeze and he held her hat on his lap.  “Well, I should say not!”

“No crowds, just everything to ourselves.”

“M-m-m-m!  Smells like lilacs.”

“We’ll pick some.”

“I—­I ought to be home.”

“Forget it!”

“Now, Mr. Shap-iro!” But her eyes continued to laugh and the straight line of her mouth would quiver.

“Some eyes you’ve got, girlie!  Some great big eyes!  They nearly bowled me over when you opened the door for me last night.  Let me see your eyes—­what color are they, anyway?”

“Green.”

They laughed without rhyme and without reason, and as if their hearts were distilling joy.  Then for a time they rode without speech and with only the wind in their ears, and he watched the tendrils of her hair blowing this way and that.

“Just think,” she said, finally, “we land in Naples just four weeks from to-day!”

“Hope the boat don’t sail.”

“You don’t.”

“Do!”

“If you aren’t just the limit!”

“What’ll I be doing while you’re gallivanting round the country with some Italian count?”

“I should worry.”

“I better put a bee in Izzy’s ear, and maybe he’ll put another in your father’s, and the old gentleman will change his mind and won’t go.”

“Yes—­he—­will—­not!  When papa promises he sticks.”

“Well, you don’t know the nervy things I can do if I want.  Nerve is my middle name.”

“You sure are some nervy.”

“‘Cheer up!’ I always say to myself when a firm closes the front door on me:  ‘Cheer up; there’s always the back door and the fire-escape left.’  That’s how I made my rep in shirtwaists—­on nerve.”  He inclined to her slightly across the car-seat.  “You wouldn’t close the front door on me, would you, Miss Miriam?”