"You let him alone! He's a darn sight better than anything I've seen you girls picking for yourselves. You never met a man in your life whose name wasn't Johnnie. You couldn't land a John in a million years." Miss Delehanty raised her face from over a shoe-buckle. A stare began to set in, as obviously innocent as a small boy's between spitballs. "Well, who said anything about old St. Louis, I'd like to know?" "You did, and you leave him alone! What do you know about a real man? You'd pass up a Ford ride to sit still in a pasteboard limousine every time!" "Well, of all things! Did I say anything?" "Yes, you did!" "Why, for my part, he can show you a good time eight nights in the week and Sundays, too." "He 'ain't got grandchildren--if you want to know it." "Did I say he had?" "Yes, you did!" "Why, I don't blame any girl for showing grandpa a good time." "You could consider yourself darn lucky, Clarice Delehanty, if one half as good ever--" "Ask the girls if I don't always say old St. Louis is all to the good. Three or four years ago, right after his wife died, I said to Ada, I said--" A head showed suddenly through the lining side of the mauve portieres, blue-eyed, blue-shaved, and with a triple ripple of black hair trained backward. "Hurry along there with fifty-seven, Delehanty! Heyman's got to see the line and catch that six-two Chicago flier." Miss Delehanty fell into pose, her profile turned back over one shoulder. "Tell him to chew a clove; it's good for breathless haste," she said, disappearing through portieres into the show-room. Miss Becker thrust herself from a hastily-found-out aperture, patting, with final touch, her belt into place. "Have I been asking you for five years, Kess, to knock before you poke your head in on us girls?" Mr. Leon Kessler appeared then fully between the curtains, letting them drape heavily behind him. Gotham garbs her poets and her brokers, her employers and employees, in the national pin-stripes and sack coat. Except for a few pins stuck upright in his coat lapel, Mr. Kessler might have been his banker or his salesman. Typical New-Yorker is the pseudo, half enviously bestowed upon his kind by _hinter_ America. It signifies a bi-weekly manicure, femininely administered; a hotel lobbyist who can outstare a seatless guest; the sang-froid to add up a dinner check; spats. When Mr. Kessler tipped, it did not clink; it rustled. In theater, at each interval between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a suspended frock of pink tulle. "What's the idea, Becker? Keokuk wants to see you in the wrap line."