uration point.
Without any conscious volition on his part, his feet carried him to the
gate and refused to carry him farther. His voice then decided to speak
for itself, and in strange, hollow tones he heard himself saying--

"Say, do you wanter go to the show with me?"

"Sure," said the pink fascinator. "When?"

"I don't care," said Joe, too much embarrassed to remember the days of
the week.

"To-morrer night?" prompted the girl.

"I don't care," said Joe, and the conversation seeming to lauguish, he
moved on.

After countless eons of time the next night arrived. It found Joe and
his girl cosily squeezed in between two fat women in the gallery of the
People's Theatre. Joe had to sit sideways and double his feet up, but he
would willingly have endured a rack of torture for the privilege of
looking down on that fluffy, blond pompadour under its large bow, and of
receiving the sparkling glances that were flashed up at him from time to
time.

"I ain't ever gone with a feller that I didn't know his name before!"
she confided before the curtain rose.

"It's Joe," he said, "Joe Ridder, What's your front name?"

"Miss Beaver," she said mischievously. "What do you think it is?"

Joe could not guess.

"Say," she went on, "I knew who you was all right even if I didn't know
yer name. I seen you over to the hall when they had the boxin' match."

"The last one?"

"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing
to him!"

The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its
immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled
complacently.

"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I
give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never
knowed you was there!"

"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when
I got stuck on you!"

Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession,
the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and
absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act
Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine,
that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum,"
fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat
he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.

"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver ev