"'Ain't you got no hunch on life, girl? Look at him! That's how I know he's decent. So would you if you'd been in this business as long as me. Can't you tell a real honest-to-God man when you see one? A business man at that!" "You got me right, Blondey. Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, Ladies' Wear, St. Louis. Here's my card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, as Mrs.--?" "Herm! You're cr--" "Syl--what'll I--do?" "An on-the-level guy, Cleone. Marry! Do you hear? M-a-r-r-y! Say, and it couldn't happen to me!" "Herman, man, I tell you you're off your head. Think once of your home--ma, Etta, grandma--with a _goy_ girl that--" "Easy there, Baldy, you're adding up wrong. You and her both celebrates the same Sundays. If anybody should ask you for Sylvette de Long's birth certificate, look it up under the P's. Birdie Pozner. It's the same with my friend. Cleone, tell the gemmemen your real name! Well, I'll tell it for you. Sadie Mosher, sister to the great Felix Mosher who played heavy down at Shefsky's theater for twenty years. _Goy!_ Say, Sammie, it's too bad a nut from the bug-house bought the Brooklyn Bridge to-day or I'd try to sell it to you." "Little Jingle Bells, if I put you in a taxi now and shoot up those credentials, will you marry me to-morrow at noon?" "I--oh, I dunno." "Marry, he says to you, girl. Think of the minus number of times girls like us get that little word whispered to 'em. Think of the short season. Moncrieff's grouch. The back muscles of your legs! Marry, he says to you, girl! Marry!" "To-morrow at noon, little one?" "I--I sleep till three." "And it couldn't 'a' been me!" "Little Jingle Bells?" "Why, y-yes, I--I'm on." At three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in a magistrate's office, beneath a framed engraving of a judicial court in wigged session, Herman Schulien Loeb and Sadie Helen Mosher became as one. A bar of scant metropolitan sunshine, miraculously let in by a cleft between two skyscrapers, lay at the feet of the bride. Slightly arear of them: Mr. Louis Slupsky; Mr. Samuel Kahn, with a tinge the color of apoplexy in his face; and Miss Sylvette de Long, her face thrust forward as if she heard melody. The voice of the magistrate rose like a bird in slow flight, then settled to a brief drone. * * * * * East is East and West is West, and St. Louis is neither. It lies like a mediator, the westerly hand of the east end of the country stretching across the sullenest part of the Mississippi to clasp the easterly hand of the west end of the country.