A late diner cruised uncertainly down the street, and, sensing the unusual, paused, rocking in his tracks.

“Whash trouble?  Shome fightin’ goin’ on?” he inquired, brightly.

“Oh, please—­please—­” Lorelei cried, tremulously.  “Don’t—­”

“Canter for the kind lady,” Wharton insisted.  “Come on.”  He began to lift and lower his shoulders in imitation of a rider.  Bergman capered awkwardly.  “Once more.”

“Fine!” shouted the drunken spectator, clapping his hands loosely.  “Tha’s bully.  Now make ’im shingle-foot.”

“Single-foot?  Certainly.  He’s park gaited.”

“Mr. Wharton!  Bob—­” Lorelei’s agonized entreaty brought her admirer to the cab door, but he fetched his prisoner in tow.  “Let him go or—­we’ll all be arrested.”

“Want see ’im shingle-foot,” eagerly importuned the stranger.

“I’ll take off his bridle if you insist.  But it’s a grand nose.  I—­love it.  Never was there such a nose.”

Bergman, with a desperate wrench, regained his freedom and staggered away with his face in his hands.

“It—­actually stretched,” said Bob, as he regretfully watched his victim.  “I dare say I’ll never find another nose like it.”

The appreciative bystander lurched forward and flung an arm over his shoulder, then, peering in at the girl, exclaimed:  “Good, wasn’t it?  I had a horse once, an’ I know.  You’re a’right, m’ frien’.  Let’s go get another one.”

Lorelei’s cab got under way at last, but barely in time, for a crowd was assembling.  She sank back weakly, and her last glimpse showed Wharton arm-in-arm with the tipsy wayfarer.

Not until she was safely inside her little apartment, with the chain on the door, did she surrender; then she burst into a trembling, choking fit of laughter.  But her estimate of Wharton had risen, and for the first time he seemed not entirely bad.

CHAPTER XIII

Jimmy Knight felt his sister’s desertion quite as keenly as did his mother and father, for his schemes, though inchoate, were ambitious, and his heart was set upon them.  Lorelei’s obstinacy was exasperating—­a woman’s unaccountable freakishness.

He confided his disappointment to Max Melcher.  “It’s pretty tough,” complained Jimmy.  “I had Merkle going, but she crabbed it.  Then just as that boob Wharton was getting daffier over her every day she gets her back up and the whole thing is cold.”

“You mean it’s cold so far as you’re concerned,” Melcher judicially amended.

“Sure.  She’s sore on me, and the whole family.”

“Then this is just the time to marry her off.  New York is a mighty lonesome place for a girl like her.  Suppose I take a hand.”

“All right.”

“Will you declare me in?”

“Certainly.”

Melcher eyed his associate coldly.  “There’s no ‘certainly’ about it.  You’d throw your own mother if you got a chance.  But you can’t throw me, understand?  You try a cross and—­the cold-meat wagon for yours.  I’ll have you slabbed at the morgue.”