“Ready, march!”

“You’re a peach, Gert.”

“I’ve tried pretty near everything in my life.  Why not wheel another fellow’s baby-carriage for another fellow’s wife’s baby across Brooklyn Bridge at midnight?  Whoops! why not!”

“We’re off, then, Gert.”

“Forward, march!”

“Keep your eye on the steering-wheel, Phonzie, and remember, ten miles is speed limit on the Bridge.  One, two, three!  Gawd! if my friend from Carson City could only see me now!”

Out on the drying sidewalk they leaned to each other, and the duet of their merriment ran ahead of them down the meager street and found out its dark corners.

“Honest, Phonzie, won’t the girls just bust when they hear this!”

“And Mil, poor old girl, she’s right weak and full of nerves now, but she’ll laugh loudest of all when she knows why I went with Slews.”

“Yes.  She-can-laugh-loudest-of-all.”

“What?”

“Come on, or we won’t get home until morning.”

And on the crest of her insouciance she thrust out her arm, giving the shining white perambulator a running push from the rear, so that it went rolling lightly from her and with a perfect gear action down the slight incline of sidewalk.  They were after it at a bound, light-heeled and full of laughter.

“Whoops, my dear!”

“Whoa!”

* * * * *

At a turn in the dark street the lights of the Bridge flashed suddenly upon them, swung in high festoons across an infinitude of night.  Above, a few majestic stars, new coined, gleamed in a clear sky.

“What do you bet that with me at the wheel we can clear the Bridge in thirty minutes, Phonzie?”

“Sure we can; but here, let me shove.”

She elbowed him aside, the banter gone suddenly from her voice.

“No, let me.”

She fell to pushing it silently along.  Stars came out in her eyes.  He advanced to her pace, matching his stride to hers, fancies like colored beads slipping along the slender thread of his thoughts.

“Swell sight, ain’t it, Gert, the harbor lights so bright and the sky so deep?”

Silence.

“Seeing so much sky all at once reminds me, Gert.  You know about that midnight—­blue satin Hertz had the brass to dump back on us because the skirt was too tight.  Huh?”

Her eyes were far and away.

“Huh, whatta you know about that, Gert?”

Her hands, gripped around the handle-bars, were full of nerves; she could feel them jumping in her palm.

“Huh, Gert?”

“What you say, Phonzie?”

“All right, don’t answer.  Moon all you like, for my part.”  And he fell to whistling as he strode beside her, his eyes on the light-spangled outline of the city.

* * * * *

At twelve o’clock the lights in the lower hall of the up-town apartment-house had been extinguished.  All but one, which burned like a tired eye beneath the ornate staircase.  The misty quiet of midnight, which is as heavy as a veil, hung in the corridors.  Miss Gertie Dobriner entered first and, holding wide the door between them, Alphonse Michelson at the front wheels, they tilted the white carriage up the narrow staircase, their whispers floating through the gloom.