Nearly everybody was reading one morning paper or another, but Kedzie was not interested in the news. One man kept brushing her nose with his paper. She was angry at his absence of mind, but she did not notice that her nose was being annoyed by her own name in the head-lines. She rode and rode and rode till her hunger distracted her. She passed restaurant after restaurant, till at last she could stand the famine no longer. She got down from the car and walked till she came to a bakery lunch-room entitled, “The Bon-Ton Bakery by Joe Gidden.” It was another like the one she ate in the day before. The same kind of waiter was there, a dish-thrower with the manners of a hostler. But Kedzie was so meek after her night on the ground that she was flattered by his grin. “Skip” Magruder was his title, as she learned in time. The “Skip” came to him from a curious impediment in his gait that caused him to drop a stitch now and then. Not long afterward Kedzie was so far beyond this poor hamstrung stable-soul that she could not hear the word _skip_ without blushing as if it were an indecency. It was an indecency, too, that such a little Aphrodite should be reduced to a love-affair with such a dismal Vulcan. But if it could happen on Olympus, it could happen on earth. Proximity is said to breed love, but priority has its virtues no less. Skip Magruder was the first New-Yorker to help Kedzie in her hour of dismay, and she thought him a great and powerful being profoundly informed about the city of her dreams. Skip did know a thing or two--possibly three. He was a New-Yorker of a sort, and he had his New York as well as Jim Dyckman had his or Peter Cheever his. He sized Kedzie up for the ignoramus she was, but he was good to her in so far as his skippy faculties permitted. He dropped the paper he was reading when she wandered in, and won her at once by not calling her “Cutie.” “W'at 'll y'ave, lady?” he said as he skirled a plate and a glass of ice-water along the oil-cloth with exquisite skill, slapped a knife and fork and spoon alongside, and flipped her a check to be punched as she ordered, and a fly-frequented bill of fare to order from. Kedzie was stumped by the array of dishes. Skip volunteered his aid--suggested “A nor'nge, ham 'n'eggs, a plate o' wheats, anna cuppa corfee.” “All right,” said Kedzie, wondering how much such a barbecue would cost. Skip went to bellow the order through a sliding door and grab it when it should be pushed forth from a mysterious realm. Kedzie picked up a newspaper that Skip had picked up after some early client left it. Kedzie glanced at the front page and saw that the Germans had taken three towns and the Allies one trench. She could not pronounce the towns, and trenches meant nothing in her life. She was about to toss the paper aside when a head-line caught her eye. She read with pardonable astonishment: SPANKED GIRL GONE