"Well, I've got two small pair," ventured Pennoyer hopefully. "Beat 'em?" "No good," said Sanderson. "Two pair--aces up." "No good," said Hawker. "Three sevens." "Beats me," said Grief. "Billie, you are the fortunate man. Heaven guide you in Third Avenue!" Florinda had gone to the window. "Who won?" she asked, wheeling about carelessly. "Billie Hawker." "What! Did he?" she said in surprise. "Never mind, Splutter. I'll win sometime," said Pennoyer. "Me too," cried Grief. "Good night, old girl!" said Wrinkles. They crowded in the doorway. "Hold on to Billie. Remember the two steps going up," Pennoyer called intelligently into the Stygian blackness. "Can you see all right?" * * * * * Florinda lived in a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the unceasing vigilance of a virtuous and heroic city government, which insisted that everything should be repaired. The alderman for the district had sometimes asked indignantly of his fellow-members why this street had not been repaired, and they, aroused, had at once ordered it to be repaired. Moreover, shopkeepers, whose stables were adjacent, placed trucks and other vehicles strategically in the darkness. Into this tangled midnight Hawker conducted Florinda. The great avenue behind them was no more than a level stream of yellow light, and the distant merry bells might have been boats floating down it. Grim loneliness hung over the uncouth shapes in the street which was being repaired. "Billie," said the girl suddenly, "what makes you so mean to me?" A peaceful citizen emerged from behind a pile of _debris_, but he might not have been a peaceful citizen, so the girl clung to Hawker. "Why, I'm not mean to you, am I?" "Yes," she answered. As they stood on the steps of the flat of innumerable fire-escapes she slowly turned and looked up at him. Her face was of a strange pallour in this darkness, and her eyes were as when the moon shines in a lake of the hills. He returned her glance. "Florinda!" he cried, as if enlightened, and gulping suddenly at something in his throat. The girl studied the steps and moved from side to side, as do the guilty ones in country schoolhouses. Then she went slowly into the flat. There was a little red lamp hanging on a pile of stones to warn people that the street was being repaired. CHAPTER XXV. "I'll get my check from the Gamin on Saturday," said Grief. "They bought that string of comics." "Well, then, we'll arrange the present funds to last until Saturday noon," said Wrinkles. "That gives us quite a lot. We can have a _table d'hote_ on Friday night."