He retreated before her scorn, but smiling.  “I’ll get you yet, you little vix,” he said; “you pretty little black-eyed vix, you; I’ll get you yet.’

“Like hell you will.”

“If you change your mind, come out on the eight-eighteen, girlie.  Two blocks to the left of the station; the corner house with a little weather-cock over the porch.  Can’t miss it.  I’ll be drapin’ the tree in tin fringe and wishing you were there.”

“Oh,” she cried, her voice cracked spang across with a sob, “I—­I just hate you!”

“No, you don’t,” he said, smiling and gathering his parcels.

“Do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do.”

“What’s that on your wrist?”

“Where?”

“There.  I thought you said you threw it away.”

Her right hand flew to her left wrist as if a welt lay there.  “This, I—­huh—­I—­I forgot I had it on.  This—­this little old bracelet you said you found in the Subway.  It—­it’s nothing but red celluloid, anyway.  I—­I nearly did throw it away.”

“You look just like a little gipsy, you do, with that red comb in that black hair of yours and that red bracelet on your little brown arm.  I’ll swear if I didn’t miss my train by ten minutes the first time I seen you standing here at this counter with those big black eyes of yours shining out.”

“You’ll miss it again if you don’t run away, Charley-boy.”

“Dare you to come along!  I’ll wait for the five-eighteen.”

“Don’t hold your breath till I do.”

“Dare you to come out on the eight-eighteen!  Say the word, and I’ll be at the station.”

“I’ll see myself crazy with the blues first.”

“You might as well come, kiddo, because I’ll get you yet.”

“Try the soft-pedal stuff about the kid and the Christmas tree on the girl at the Glendale station.  Maybe she hasn’t cut her eye-teeth.”

A flush swept his face like quick wind.  “You’re a bum sport, all righty.”

“And you!  Gee! if I was to tell you what I think you are!  If I was!” She sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but smiled.  “But I wouldn’t take the trouble, Charley-boy—­honest, I wouldn’t take the trouble.”

“I’ll get you yet, you little vix,” he insisted, his white smile flashing, and retreating into the crowd.

“You—­oh—­oh, you!”

She stood looking after him, head backward and hip arched forward in the pose of Carmen’s immortal defiance.  But behind her flashing attitude her heart rose to her throat and a warm gush of blood to her face, betraying it.

When the illuminated hands of the illuminated tower clock swung to the wide angle of five o’clock, Miss Marjorie Clark and Miss Minnie Bundt, from the fancy-fruit stand opposite, cast off the brown cocoon of their workaday for the trim street finery which the American shopgirl, to the stupefaction of economists and theorists, can somehow evolve out of eight dollars a week.