Clay came to a sudden alert attention.  His eyes focused on a girl sitting on a back seat.  In the pretty, childish face he read a wistful helplessness, a pathetic hint of misery that called for sympathy.

Arizona takes short cuts to its ends.  Clay rose instantly, put his foot on the railing, and leaped across to the top of the bus rolling parallel with the one he was on.  In another second he had dropped into the seat beside the girl.

“Glad to meet you again, Miss Kitty,” he said cheerfully.  “How’s the big town been using you?”

The girl looked at him with a little gasp of surprise.  “Mr. Lindsay!” Sudden tears filmed her eyes.  She forgot that she had left him with the promise never again to speak to him.  She was in a far country, and he was a friend from home.

The conductor bustled down the aisle.  “Say, where do you get this movie-stunt stuff?  You can’t jump from the top of one bus to another.”

Clay smiled genially.  “I can’t, but I did.”

“That ain’t the system of transfers we use in this town.  You might ‘a’ got killed.”

“Oh, well, let’s not worry about that now.”

“I’d ought to have you pulled.  Three years I’ve been on this run and—­”

“Nice run.  Wages good?”

“Don’t get gay, young fellow.  I can tell you one thing.  You’ve got to pay another fare.”

Clay paid it.

The conductor retired to his post.  He grinned in spite of his official dignity.  There was something about this young fellow he liked.  After he had been in New York awhile he would be properly tamed.

“What about that movie job?  Is it pannin’ out pay gold?” Lindsay asked Kitty.

Bit by bit her story came out.  It was a common enough one.  She had been flim-flammed out of her money by the alleged school of moving-picture actors, and the sharpers had decamped with it.

As she looked at her recovered friend, Kitty gradually realized an outward transformation in his appearance.  He was dressed quietly in clothes of perfect fit made for him by Colin Whitford’s tailor.  From shoes to hat he was a New Yorker got up regardless of expense.  But the warm smile, the strong, tanned face, the grip of the big brown hand that buried her small one—­all these were from her own West.  So too had been the nonchalance with which he had stepped from the rail of one moving bus to that of the other, just as though this were his usual method of transfer.

“I’ve got a job at last,” she explained to him.  “I couldn’t hardly find one.  They say I’m not trained to do anything.”

“What sort of a job have you?”

“I’m working downtown in Greenwich Village, selling cigarettes.  I’m Sylvia the Cigarette Girl.  At least that’s what they call me.  I carry a tray of them evenings into the cafes.”

“Greenwich Village?” asked Clay.

Kitty was not able to explain that the Village is a state of mind which is the habitat of long-haired men and short-haired women, the brains of whom functioned in a way totally alien to all her methods of thought.  The meaning of Bohemianism was quite lost on her simple soul.