"Sure, and I'm going to keep it; but I'm wearin' a celluloid collar to-night, hon, and the fireside ain't no place for me. I wouldn't wanna blow your mamma to smithereens." "Joe!" "I wouldn't--honest, sweetness, I wouldn't." "Joe, comin' to our house ain't like bein' company--honest! When the boys and girls from the store used to come over we'd roll back the carpets, and ma'd play on an old comb and Jimmie'd make a noise like a banjo, and--" "Hear! Hear! You sound like 'Way Down East' gone into vaudeville." "Come on up to-night, Joe--like you promised." "We'll talk it over a little later, sweetness. Midnight ain't no time to call on your best girl's dame. What'll she be thinkin' of us buttin' in there for midnight supper? To-morrow night's Sunday--that'll be more like it." "She got it waitin' for us, Joe. All week she been fixing every night, and us not comin'. She knows it's the only time we got, Joe. She says she'd rather have us come home after the show than go kiting round like this. Honest, Joe, she's regular sport herself. She used to be the life of her department; the girls used to laff and laff at her cuttings-up. She's achin' to see you, Joe. She knows I we--she don't talk about nothin' else, Joe; and she's sick--it scares me to think how sick maybe she is." He leaned to her upturned face; tears trembled on her lashes and in her voice. "Please, Joe!" "To-morrow night, sure, little Essie Birdsong. Gawd, what a name! Why didn't they call you--" "They always used to call us the Songbirds at the store." "Look, will you? Read--'Tango Contest next Monday night!' Are you game, little one? We'd won the last if they'd kept the profesh off the floor. Come on! Let's go in and practise for it." "Not to-night, Joe, please. We're only four blocks from home, and it ain't right, our keepin' company like this every night for three months and not goin'. It ain't right." He paused in the sea of green moonlight before the gold threshold of the Palais du Danse, whose caryatides were faun-eyed Maenads and AEgipans. The gold figure of a Cybele in a gold chariot raced with eight reproductions of herself in an octagonal mirror-lined foyer, and a steady stream of Corybantes bought admission tickets at twenty-five cents a Corybant. Phrygian music, harlequined to meet the needs of Forty-second Street and its anchorites, flared and receded with the opening and closing of gilded doors. "Come on, girlie! To-morrow night we'll do the fireside proper." "You never--nev-er do anything I ask you to, Joe. You jolly me along and jolly me along, and then--do nothing." He released her suddenly, plunged his hands into his pockets, and slumped in his shoulders.