“That ain’t no way to interdooce me to the lady, kid,” said the big fellow.  “She won’t look my way if you treat me light like that.  My name’s Earl Usher.  Honest truth, ’tis, off the bills!  Y’will come along, won’t you?”

“You’re very kind,” Win began in the conventional way that he had laughed at in the morning.  Then, afraid of being teased again, she said that she must go home.

“I don’t know what my landlady will think,” she excused herself.  “I walked out early this morning, never dreaming I should be gone until late at night.”

“Well, she can’t kill you,” suggested Miss Kirk, “and, anyhow, you’re leavin’ the end of the week.  I think you’ll be real mean if you won’t come.  I know what your reason is, and so does he. He ain’t nobody’s fool.  Do you s’pose I’m the sort would do anything myself, or ask you to do anything, that wasn’t all right?  We ain’t in the Four Hundred, nor yet in court circles, I don’t think.  And this ain’t London nor it ain’t Boston.  Thank Gawd it’s little old N’York.”

“But—–­” Win persisted, and stopped.

“I know what’s got her goat,” said Earl Usher.  “It’s that slush o’ mine this morning about not bein’ a millionaire and my face needin’ to be fed.  I thought afterward ’that’s no talk for a gen’leman to use before a lady.’  Well, I may not be a millionaire at present, but I can see my way to feedin’ our t’ree faces and not feel the pinch.”

“Ain’t you the fresh guy?” exclaimed Miss Kirk.  “Our faces are our own, thank you just the same, and this is a Dutch treat.  You might ‘a’ knowed we’d stick that close to ettiket.  I can run to fifteen cents, as far as I’m concerned How is it with you, Miss Child?”

“I can run to that, too,” said Win.

“Same here,” announced the big young man; “though I’d set my heart on t’other kind o’ treat.  Where shall it be?  I suppose we mustn’t think o’ the Waldorf—­what?”

“Huh!” snorted Miss Kirk, “not for mine, if I owned the mint!  I bin to the Waldorf wunst, of course.  I went just out of curiosity to see how the swells et.  Wunst is enough, like goin’ to the menagerie.  Y’owe it to yer intelligence to see all the different forms of animal life the good Lord has created, behavin’ accordin’ to their kind, and then come back to your own, thankin’ Gawd you’re not as they are.  We’ll eat at Ginger Jim’s, where we can lean our elbows on the tables and get perfectly good oyster soup for ten cents a head!”

They walked for a while, Earl Usher insisting on the two girls taking his arms, one on either side.  By and by they got into a crosstown car, and it was when Win was being helped out by the lion tamer that a motor dashed past.  The existence of people who went about in splendid gray motor cars seemed to Win so far away from her own just then that, standing in the street, her hand in Earl Usher’s, she gazed into the large, lighted window of the automobile as she might have gazed through a powerful telescope at a scene of family life on Mars.