d Mr. Fletcher bent his
elbow, and her wrist rested in the crook of his arm. Oh, her dream was
true; her dream was true!

Mr. Fletcher, on the other hand, was hardly in a more natural relation.
He was trying to think how the men talked to women in all the literature
he had read. The myriad jokes about the fondness of girls for ice-cream
recurred to him, and he risked everything on their fidelity to fact.

"Are you fond of ice-cream?" he inquired.

"Oh no; I _don't_ think," said Cordelia. "What'll you ask next? What
girl ain't crushed on ice-cream, I'd like to know?"

"Do you know of a nice place to get some?"

"Do I? The Dutchman's, on the av'noo, another block up, is the finest in
the city. You get mo--that is, you get everything 'way up in G there,
with cakes on the side, and it don't cost no more than anywhere else."

So to the German's they went, and Clarice fancied herself at the Casino
in Newport. All the girls around her, who seemed to be trying to swallow
the spoons, took on the guise of blue-blooded belles, while the noisy
boys and young men (calling out, "Hully gee, fellers! look at Nifty
gittin' out der winder widout payin'!" and, "Say, Tilly, what kind er
cream is dat you're feedin' your face wid?") seemed to her so many
millionaires and the exquisite sons thereof. To Mr. Fletcher the
German's back-yard saloon, with its green lattice walls, and its rusty
dead Christmas trees in painted butter-kegs, appeared uncommonly
brilliant and fine. The fact that whenever he took a swallow of water
the ice-cream turned to cold candle-grease in his mouth made no
difference. He was happy, and Cordelia was in an ecstasy by the time he
had paid a shock-headed, bare-armed German waiter, and they were again
on the avenue side by side. She put out her hand and rested it on his
arm again--to make sure she was Clarice.

One would like to know whether, in the breasts of such as these,
familiar environment exerts any remarkable influence. If so, it could
have been in but one direction. For that part of town was one vast
nursery. Everywhere, on every side, were the swarming babies--a baby for
every flag-stone in the pavements. Babies and babies, and little besides
babies, except larger children and the mothers. Perambulators with two,
even three, baby passengers; mothers with as many as five children
trailing after them; babies in broad baggy laps, babies at the breast,
babies creeping, toppling, screaming, overflowing into