"Of course I ain't, honey; only, with you and him goin' right over to Al's afterward, what's the sense of me goin'? I wanna stay home and think. It's just like beginnin' to-night I could sit here and look right into the time when there ain't goin' to be no more waitin' up nights for my boy. I--They got all little white chickens out at Denny's roadhouse, Blutch--white with red combs. Can we have some like them?" "You betcher life we can! I'm going to win the beginnings of that farm before I'm a night older. Lordy! Lordy! and to think I never knew anything was eatin' her!" "Blutch, I--I don't know what to say. I keep cryin' when I wanna laugh. I never was so happy, Blutch, I never was." "My little kitty-puss!" * * * * * At seven o'clock came Mr. Joe Kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. "Come right in, Joe! I'm here and waitin' for you." "Ain't the missis in on this killin'?" "She--Not this--" "No, Joe; not--to-night." "Sorry to hear it," said Mr. Kirby, flecking an inch of cigar-ash to the table-top. "Fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is wearing to-night." "The wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" "Blutch!" "You know my sentiments about her. They don't come no ace-higher." She colored, even quivered, standing there beside the bronze Nydia. "I tell her we're out for big business to-night, Joe." "Sky's the limit. Picked up a pin pointin' toward me and sat with my back to a red-headed woman. Can't lose." "Well, good-night, Babe. Take care o' yourself." "Good night, Blutch. You'll play 'em close, honey?" "You just know I will, Babe." An hour she sat there, alone on the _chaise-longue_, staring into space and smiling at what she saw there. Finally she dropped back into the lacy mound of pillows, almost instantly asleep, but still smiling. * * * * * At four o'clock, that hour before dawn cracks, even the West Forties, where night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry, drop into long narrow aisles of gloom. Thin, high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede into the mouse-colored mist of morning, and, as through quagmire, this mist hovering close to ground, figures skulk--that nameless, shapeless race of many bloods and one complexion, the underground complexion of paste long sour from standing.