"A younger figure than yours is getting to be wouldn't hurt the line any, you know. It's because I make it a rule not to throw off the old girls when their waist-lines begin to spread that makes you so grateful, is it? There's not a firm in town keeps on a girl after she begins to heavy up. If you got to know why I took you off the dress line and put you in the wraps, it's because I seen you widening into a thirty-eight, and a darn poor one at that. I can sell two wraps off Cissie to one off you. You're getting hippy, girl, and, since you started the subject, you can be darn glad you know where your next week's salary's coming from." She was reddening so furiously that even her earlobes, their tips escaping beneath the turban, were tinged. "Maybe I--I'm getting hippy, Kess; but it'll take more than anything you can ever do for me to make up for--" "Gad!" he said, flipping an ash in some disgust, "I wish I had a ten-cent piece for every one since!" "Oh," she cried, her throat jerking, "you eat what you just said! You eat it, because you know it ain't so!" "Now look here," he said, straightening up suddenly, "I don't know what your game is, but if you're here to stir up the old dust that's been laid for five years--" "No, no, Kess! It's only that--what I got to tell you--I--it makes a difference, I--" "What?" "There's nothing in these years since, I swear to God, or in the years before, that I got to be ashamed of!" "All right! All right!" "If ever a girl came all of a sudden to her senses, it was me. If ever a girl has lived a quiet life, picking herself up and brushing the dust off, it's been me. Oh, I don't say I 'ain't been entertained by the trade--I didn't dodge my job--but it's been a straight kind of a time--straight!" "I'm not asking for an alibi, Becker. What's the idea?" "Kess," she said, leaning forward, with tears popping out in her eyes, "I.W. Goldstone has asked me to marry him." He laid down his roll in the act of buttering it, gazing across at her with his knife upright in his hand. "Huh?" "Night before last, Kess, in the poppy-room at Shalif's." "Are you crazy?" "It's the God's truth, Kess. He's begging me for an answer by to-night, before he goes back home." "I.W. Goldstone, of Goldstone & Auer, ladies' wear?" She nodded, her hand to her throat. "Well, I'll be strung up!" "He--he says, Kess, it's been on his mind for a year and a half, ever since his spring trip a year ago. He wants to take me back with him, Kess, home." "Whew!" said Mr. Kessler, wiping his brow and the back of his collar. "You're no more surprised than me, Kess. I--I nearly fell off the Christmas tree." "Good Lord! Why, his wife--he had her in the store it seems yesterday!" "She's been dead four years and seven months, Kess." "Old I.W. and you!" "He's only fifty-two, Kess; I'm thirty-four." "I.W. Goldstone!" "I know it. I can't realize it, neither." "Why, he's worth two hundred thousand, if he's worth a cent!"