"I thought maybe you was waitin' for Jeems to bring around your limousine, Miss Thursby." "I was, but he won't be here till day before yesterday." The strain of such repartee proved too much for Austin; he felt himself outclassed and, shuffling to cover his discomfiture, sought another subject. "Whacha doing tonight, Joan? Anythin' special?" "I've got an engagement to pass remarks on the weather with the Dook de Bonehead," the girl returned with asperity. "He ain't late, either." "I guess that was one off the griddle, all right," said Austin pensively. "Excuse me for livin'." There fell a pause, Joan contemptuously staring away through the glimmering rain-drops, Austin desperately casting about for a conversational opening less calculated than its predecessors to educe rebuffs. "Say, Joan, lis'en--" "Move on," the girl interrupted: "you're blocking the traffic." "Nah--serious': howja like to go to a show tonight?" She turned incredulous eyes to him. "What show?" she drawled. "I gotta pass for Ziegfield's Follies--N'Yawk Roof. Wanta go?" "Quit your kidding," she replied after a brief pause devoted to analysis of his sincerity. "Y' know you've got to work." "Nothin' like that!" he insisted. "The Hip closed last Sat'dy and I got a coupla weeks lay-off while they're gettin' ready to rehearse the new show. On the level, now: will you go with me?" "_Will_ I!" The girl drew a long, ecstatic breath. Then her face darkened as she glanced again at the street: "But we'll get all wet!" "No, we won't: I'll get an umbrella. Besides, it's lettin' up." With this Austin vanished, to return in a few minutes with a fairly presentable umbrella. The shower was, in fact, fast passing on over Long Island, leaving in its wake a slackening drizzle amid deep-throated growls at constantly lengthening intervals. Half-clothed children were seeping in swelling streams from the tenements as the two--Austin holding the umbrella, Joan with a hand on her escort's arm, her skirts gathered high about her trim ankles--splashed through lukewarm puddles toward Third Avenue. A faint and odorous vapour steamed up from wet and darkly lustrous asphalt. They hurried on in silence: Austin dumbly content with his conquest of the aloof tolerance which the girl had theretofore shown him, and planning bolder and more masterful steps; Joan all ecstatic with the prospect of seeing for the first time a "Broadway show".... A few minutes before nine they left the cross-town car at Broadway and Forty-second Street.