He heaved a great sigh and rose. "Well, I'd better be goin'. You're sure, are you, that I look all right?" "Perfect." The joy of living spread over his face. "Yes, I guess I do." They walked together to the stoop. David watched the Mayor's progress down the street, saw the heads turn to stare at his effulgent amplitude, and he guessed how the Mayor's gratification was chirrupping to itself beneath the Mayor's waistcoat. David had ceased cooking his own meals since he had moved from his basement room, and had become a boarder at the Pan-American Café. When he, Rogers and Tom appeared at breakfast the next morning the Mayor, pale and agitated, yet striving to look composed, hurried over to their table. "I want to see you as soon's you're through eatin'," he whispered in David's ear. "All right," said David. The Mayor kept an impatient eye on David, and the moment breakfast was done he was at David's side, hat in hand. "We can't talk in here," he said. "I've got a key to the Liberty Assembly Hall. Let's go over there." And excusing themselves to Rogers, he led David out. The big ball-room, scattered about with the débris of the previous night's pleasure, had in the cold light of morning a look of desolation which even the mural cascades and seas and mountains could not dispel. The room was a fit setting for the despairing face the Mayor turned upon David when the hall door was locked behind them. The Mayor did not speak for several seconds, held his gaze straight on David; then he shouted, his mask of self-control flung aside: "Well, you see me! What d'you think o' me?" "What's up? "It's all up! I've gone and done it!" "Done what?" "What?--I've done _It_!--I'm engaged!" There was frantic hopelessness in the Mayor's voice and in the Mayor's face. "You don't say so!" David ejaculated. "I did say so!" David could hardly restrain a laugh at the Mayor's desperate appearance. "Engaged! You don't look it!" "A-a-h! quit your kiddin'!" roared the Mayor fiercely. "This ain't nothin' to laugh at. It's serious." "To which one?" David queried, with the required gravity. "Carrie Becker. I knew she'd get me. Oh, she's a slick one all right! Say, friend, if you want a job kicking me at five dollars an hour, get busy!" He began to pace wildly to and fro across the room, then let himself drop with a groan into a chair beneath an Alpine cascade, so that it seemed the water was splashing upon his polished head. "It was last night--in this damned hall--in that damned corner there--that it happened," he burst out to David, who had taken a chair beside him. "The hall was all fixed up fancy. There was a line o' them green, shiny, greasy-lookin' perpetuated palms across each corner. What's anybody want a hall fixed like that for!--ain't the old way good enough, I'd like to know?