"I know a lot of things I ain't supposed to know," replied she. "You're a wise guy, all right, Eva, and one thing I like about you is that you don't let anything you know hurt you." And then, after a pause: "I like him," she said. "What's his name?" The Lizard eyed her for a moment. "Don't you get to liking him too much," he said. "That bird's the class. He ain't for any little--" "Cut it!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm as good as you are and a damn straighter. What I get I earn, and I don't steal it." The Lizard grinned. "I guess you're right at that; but don't try to pull him down any lower than he is. He is coming up again some day to where he belongs." "I ain't going to try to pull him down," said the girl. "And anyhow, when were you made his godfather?" Jimmy saw Eva almost daily for many weeks. He saw her at her post-meridian breakfast--sober and subdued; he saw her later in the evening, in various stages of exhilaration, but at those times she did not come to his table and seldom if ever did he catch her eye. They talked a great deal while she breakfasted, and he learned to like the girl and to realize that she possessed two personalities. The one which he liked dominated her at breakfast; the other which he loathed guided her actions later in the evening. Neither of them ever referred to those hours of her life, and as the days passed Jimmy found himself looking forward to the hour when Little Eva would come to Feinheimer's for her breakfast. CHAPTER XI. CHRISTMAS EVE. It was Christmas Eve. Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden were completing the rounds of their friends' homes with Christmas remembrances--a custom that they had continued since childhood. The last parcel had been delivered upon the South Side, and they were now being driven north on Michigan Boulevard toward home. Elizabeth directed the chauffeur to turn over Van Buren to State, which at this season of the year was almost alive with belated Christmas shoppers and those other thousands who always seize upon the slightest pretext for a celebration. It was a noisy, joyous crowd whose spirit, harmonizing with the bright lights and the gay shop windows, infected all who came within its influence. As the car moved slowly northward along the world's greatest retail street the girls leaned forward to watch the passing throng through the windows. "Isn't it wonderful," exclaimed Harriet, "what a transformation a few lights make? Who would ever think of State Street as a fairy-land? And yet, if you half close your eyes the hallucination is complete. Even the people who by daylight are shoddy and care-worn take on an appearance of romance and gaiety, and the tawdry colored lights are the scintillant gems of the garden of a fairy prince."