“Sure.  I guess you’re all right.  I don’t usually go out with strange gentlemen, though.  It ain’t quite ladylike.  When should you want to see me again?”

“As soon as I may,” said Carter.  “If you would allow me to call at your home, I—­”

Masie laughed musically.  “Oh, gee, no!” she said, emphatically.  “If you could see our flat once!  There’s five of us in three rooms.  I’d just like to see ma’s face if I was to bring a gentleman friend there!”

“Anywhere, then,” said the enamored Carter, “that will be convenient to you.”

“Say,” suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look in her peach-blow face; “I guess Thursday night will about suit me.  Suppose you come to the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30.  I live right near the corner.  But I’ve got to be back home by eleven.  Ma never lets me stay out after eleven.”

Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and then hastened to his mother, who was looking about for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze Diana.

A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer.

“Did you make a hit with his nobs, Mase?” she asked, familiarly.

“The gentleman asked permission to call,” answered Masie, with the grand air, as she slipped Carter’s card into the bosom of her waist.

“Permission to call!” echoed small eyes, with a snigger.  “Did he say anything about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?”

“Oh, cheese it!” said Masie, wearily.  “You’ve been used to swell things, I don’t think.  You’ve had a swelled head ever since that hose-cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint.  No, he never mentioned the Waldorf; but there’s a Fifth Avenue address on his card, and if he buys the supper you can bet your life there won’t be no pigtail on the waiter what takes the order.”

As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart.  He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years of his life.  And that the object of it should make so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tortured him with misgivings.

Carter did not know the shopgirl.  He did not know that her home is often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with kith and kin.  The street-corner is her parlor, the park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber.

One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park.  They found a bench, tree-shadowed and secluded, and sat there.

For the first time his arm stole gently around her.  Her golden-bronze head slid restfully against his shoulder.