“He’s uncertain when hungry,” explained the gob; “but he’s just fed. He’s had one small dog, one large fruit-stand, three cans of garbage, a corner of the Waldorf-Astoria and a chew of the best plug. You could trust him to tow a baby-carriage down Peacock Alley.” Miss Vail embarked. Her next observation, “Do behave yourself, Renny,” was inferred rather than heard, in the commotion of their turning. Nor was their converse thereafter, though earnest, of import to the others, who considerately concentrated their attention upon the outer world. The Recherché Restaurant was doing a languid, ten-cent-to-a-quarter trade, when East Fifty-eighth Street burst into “The Anvil Chorus.” Its entire clientèle rushed to the door, followed by a tall, calm-eyed girl with the cash-register in her arms. The tank brought up with a lurch opposite her. “Good evening, Miss Nora,” said the flit, emerging. “Good evening, yourself, and who are _you_?” returned Miss McSears placidly. The flit assumed an air of profound injury. “Did you or did you not, one year back, come St. Patrick’s Day, after the Club dance at camp, take my regimental pin to wear and say you’d never forget Private F. Slayter, now corporal?” “Maybe I did,” admitted the girl. “But your face was clean then.” “I’ve joined the tanks since,” said Corporal Slayter. “Treat ’em rough.” Selecting the nearest dimple in Miss McSears’s piquant face, he saluted it in form. “Move on!” cried that young lady, helpless by reason of the cash-machine, but wrathful. “My father’s a policeman and I’ll be telephoning for him.” “Ask him can I keep company with his daughter,” suggested the unperturbed flit. “We’ll move on when you move with us.” “In _that_?” retorted the girl, bestowing a scornful look upon the monster. “I don’t believe it’s even respectable. Who’s in there?” Responding to the flit’s unspoken appeal, the woman passenger stepped out. “I’m Carey Vail,” she began in her quiet, assured voice. “You may know--” “Hello, Vail,” interrupted Miss McSears. “Why, Mac! Bless your old heart! How are you?” The two did not fall on each other’s neck. They shook hands in manly fashion. “This is one of our emergency volunteers for the ‘flu’ work,” explained the girl in uniform. “They don’t make them any better.” “They don’t need to, as far’s I’m concerned,” murmured Mr. Slayter, relieving the bearer of the cash-register. “Are you on for our little party, Nora?” “Wait till I telephone for a substitute,” said Miss McSears. “And do you behave yourself, you with your ‘Nora’!” Upon her return, after some delay, there was heard issuing from the tank’s interior dolorous music, in the sike’s plaintive baritone: “No one to pity him, none to cay-ress No one to help _him_ in his sad dy-stress.” “The Sweet Singer of Michigan has broken his parole,” observed the gob. “Hey, you inside, what’s on your bursting chest?”