"That wouldn't be so far off the truth. Anyhow where do you get off. Who beaned you?" Another burden of reticence was snatched away. At last Peter had a chance to tell somebody about the bandages. "I was with a woman up at the Eldorado. You know the Eldorado. And a big fellow comes over and tries to butt in. I bawled him out and we went up on the sidewalk. I made a couple of passes at him and he hauled off and clipped me with a bottle--a champagne bottle. I guess I was pretty drunk." Charlie Hall nodded his head. "You're all right. I'm glad. Some of the boys around here have been telling me that you were all busted up about that girl you married. I'm glad it's not so. I knew you had too much sense for that. There isn't a one of them in the whole world that's worth getting busted up over. Don't take 'em seriously. That's what I say. I ought to know. I've been married fifteen years. Well, almost fifteen years. It'll be fifteen years in October." "I'm all right, Charlie. You tell that to the rest. I'm back on the job, you know." "That's good. It wouldn't seem like the Bulletin without you." Charlie turned to the story in front of him and put one second of energy into pounding the space bar before coming back to conversation. "Where is this Eldorado?" he asked. "Fiftieth Street and Seventh Avenue." "Does it stay open all night?" "Well, it's open all night but after one there's a man on the door and he won't let you in unless he knows you." "Are they strict about it?" "Pretty strict, lately," said Peter, "but that's all right, Charlie. Any time you want to go up late you let me know. I'll be glad to show you round. I'm always free nights. Any night at all--That is any night except Sunday." CHAPTER X THE baby carriage was kept in the kitchen thereafter and Peter did not see it again until Sunday, his first Sunday at home. Kate left the flat very early. Peter could not very well object to that because she said she was going to mass. He wished that she might be converted to one of the eleven o'clock denominations, but he supposed at her age there was small hope of that. She would be gone, she told him, until nine or ten o'clock in the evening. Her niece, the one who lived in Jamaica, had a new baby five weeks old. Kate was going there right after church. Peter thought that if he had Kate's job he would prefer to spend his day off at an old folks' home or some other spot exclusively mature. Still he could understand the psychology of it. Out in Jamaica, Kate could sit around and when the baby cried she need not move hand or foot. She could watch other people bustle around and fulfill its needs. And then every now and then she might give advice and see it carried out. He himself had spent many a day off in the office of the Bulletin sitting on the desk of somebody who was working and interrupting him.