“Yah see,” explained Andy, nonchalantly juggling a medicine-ball the while, “since the tight skirt come in I’m getting a lot of ladies to train down to their skirts. More’n I can really handle right. Now, I kinda thought if you’d come in as assistant—well, yah can name yahr own terms, Miss Darcy.” The girl looked at him with bright and affectionate eyes. “Andy, you’re a dear. That’s the nicest thing that ever happened to me.” “It ain’t a proposition I’d make to everybody, I can tell yah,” averred the professional. “In fact, I dunno as there’s any one else I’d make it to but you. Except Miss Greene,” he added loyally. “I’m awfully sorry, Andy. But I couldn’t very well drop my other work.” “No?” sighed Andy. “Well, I s’pose not. Well,” he added, palliating the blow to his hopes, “yah’ll be gettin’ married one of these days, and then it’d be all off, anyhow.” “Married!” laughed his pupil. “Who’d marry a plain little stick like me in a city full of pretty girls?” “Go-wan!” retorted the other. Regarding her candid face, he perceived that this was no bluff. “Go-wan!” he repeated fervidly. “Get onto yahrself. Ain’t yah got a _mirrah_ in the house?” “Oh, that’s just because you like me, Andy,” she returned. Nevertheless she thrilled to the rough compliment. Holcomb Lee, with his artistic sense, and now this expert of flesh and blood! Was her dream really coming true already? That very afternoon it was shattered. The Fifth Avenue bus went sliding, slewing, and curving along the wet pavement. Within sat a moist and bedraggled but cheerful Darcy, returning from a highly encouraging consultation with Mr. B. Riegel and the head of his color-room called in to meet the firm’s most promising contributor of designs. Another advance in her rates had been foreshadowed; so what did Darcy care, though forgotten umbrella and overshoes had exposed her to a violent shower, now clearing? Her Central Park jaunts had hardened her to a point where she disregarded weather with contemptuous indifference. So now, instead of being huddled in her seat, contemplative of her own discomfort, she sat alert and interestedly watchful of the outside world that went sliding past her window. At the corner of Fifteenth Street the bus skidded to a stop at the signal of a frail, poorly dressed young woman who staggered out from the curb, lugging a large suitcase in both hands. She tried to lift it to the step and failed.