"Fact is, I'm lonesome," he explained, when they reached the street. "Till you came I never got a chance to talk to the right sort of girl except in the operating-chair, and that didn't cut much ice, for it was always about teeth. Hope you don't mind my dropping round for you once in a while after office hours? It will keep these street-corner mashers away from you and do a lot toward civilizing me." Jean accepted his companionship as frankly as it was tendered. There was nothing loverlike about Paul's attitude. He was precisely the same whether they walked alone or whether, as frequently happened, Amy came down with her to the employees' entrance, where Jean had suggested that they meet. His escort was doubly welcome during the last week before Christmas when the great store kept open evenings, and the shopping quarter held its nightly jam. Then, perhaps a fortnight after the holidays, she overheard a conversation. It was not about herself, nor among girls she knew, nor indeed in her department; merely a scrap of waspish dispute between two young persons of free speech who supposed themselves in sole possession of the cloak-room. Black Eyes remarked that she knew very well what Blue Eyes was. She didn't belong there; her place was the East Side. Whereupon Blue Eyes elegantly retorted that unless Black Eyes shut her mouth, she would smash her ugly face in. This was evidently purely rhetorical, for when Black Eyes waxed yet more personal, pointing out the inconsistent relation of fifteen-dollar picture hats to six dollars a week, with pertinent reference to a bald floor-walker from the carpet department who waited for Blue Eyes every night, the only act of violence was the slamming of a door which covered Blue Eyes's swift retreat. That evening Jean told the dentist he must come no more. "Suffering bicuspid!" he gasped. "What have _I_ done?" This despite her tactful best to assure him that he had done nothing at all. It seemed enormously difficult of explanation at first, but when she suggested that she found the department store not unlike a small town for gossip, he comprehended instantly. "Who has been talking?" he demanded. "If it was that pup of a floor-walker--" "It wasn't. So far as I know, not a soul has mentioned my name. It's because they mustn't talk, that I've spoken." Paul squared a by no means puny pair of shoulders. "Let me catch 'em at it!" he said.