It was an excellent dinner, as Philip had predicted it would be, beginning with olives and celery and rich chicken gumbo, and ending with a brandy-sauced pudding for which Bero’s place was famous. Philip was again touched sympathetically when he saw how his table companion ate and when she broke into his story of the year afield to say, with a quaint twist of the pretty lips: “You must think I’m a perfect pig, eating the way I do; but I was awfully hungry. Some days when we are rushed in the shop I don’t take time to go out at noon. I didn’t to-day.” He nodded understandingly, telling her to eat heartily and give the house a good name; this by way of covering his dismay at the conditions to which her admission pointed. It was even worse than he had prefigured. He was confident that it was only to save her pride that she had pleaded the lack of time for a midday meal. With three other mouths to fill, she simply couldn’t afford a luncheon for herself--he knew it. Not to be able to get enough to eat was horrible! “How do you come to be trimming hats?” he asked, trying to push aside the discomforting thoughts stirred up by her tacit divulgence of the family poverty. “It is my one little gift; and I didn’t know I had it. Oh, of course, I have always trimmed my own--and Mummie’s and the girls’; but that was nothing. I was so glad I could have cried when I found that somebody was willing to pay me money--real money--for doing it.” “Yes; and I’ll bet they are not paying you half enough,” he frowned. “And keeping you on until eight or nine o’clock--that is a plain outrage!” “You mustn’t find fault with my job,” she protested laughingly. “I can tell you I was glad enough to get it, in a city where almost all the places to work are filled by men.” Though he maneuvered cleverly to prolong it to the uttermost, the excellent dinner came to an end all too soon; and when she asked him what time it was, and he was obliged to tell her that it was a quarter past eight, she rose in a little panic of haste, saying that she must go home; that her mother would be worrying. When he went around to help her into her coat he again felt the lightness of it and swore inwardly at the conventions that kept him from taking her out and buying her a better one. Why couldn’t he do just that? There was no reason save the silly inhibitions which kept a man from doing for a woman in need what he would be applauded for doing if the woman were a man. He thought of Bromley and his saying about the various ways of choking the cat. Would the play-boy be able to find some way of helping this dear, brave girl without hurting her pride? And if Bromley could do it, why couldn’t he--Philip--contrive to do it? It was a muddled world! When he had paid for the dinners and had gone with her to the sidewalk, she gave him a small surprise by thanking him gratefully and trying to bid him good-by.