uey joint, or
could you get by with a nut sundae at a cut-rate drug store? And suppose
some curb broker was waitin' to take her out to Heather Blossom Inn?
You'd put up a hot competition, you would, with nothing but the change
from a five left in your jeans."

"Ah, just leave that to me, old son," he'd say, winkin' devilish.

And the one time when he did pull it off I happened to hear about. A
friend of his who was usher at the old Hippodrome offered to tow him to
a little Sunday night supper at the flat of one of the chorus ladies.
Lester went, too, and found a giddy thing of about forty fryin' onions
for a fam'ly of five, includin' three half-grown kids and a
scene-shiftin' hubby.

That blow seems to discourage Lester for a week or so, since which he
has run true to form. He'll run around with lady typists, or girls from
the cloak department, or most anything that wears skirts, until they
discover what a tight-wad he is and give him the shunt. But his great
aim in life is to acquire a lady-friend that he can point out in the
second row and hang around for at the stage door about midnight.

So when I sees him flutterin' about Miss Joyce, and her making motions
like she was fallin' for him, I didn't quite know what to make of it.
Course, now that she's bucked up a bit on her costume she is more or
less easy to look at. For a little thing, almost a half portion, as you
might put it, she has quite a figure, slim and graceful. And them pansy
brown eyes can light up sort of fascinatin', I expect. And being so
fresh from the country I suppose she can't dope out what a cheap shimmy
lizard Lester is. It's a wonder some of the other typists hadn't put her
wise. They're usually good at that. But it looks like they'd missed a
trick in her case, for one noon I overhears Lester datin' her up for an
evenin' at Zinsheimer's. And when he drifts along I can't resist
throwin' out a hint, on my own account.

"With Lester, eh?" says I, humpin' my eyebrows.

"Oh, I know," says Miss Joyce. "But I do love to dance and I--I've been
rather lonely, you see."

I saw. And of course after that there was nothing more to say. She
didn't tell me as much, but I understand that it got to be a regular
thing. You could tell that by the intimate way Lester tips her the wink
as he swaggers by. He didn't take any pains to hide it, or to lower his
voice when he remarks, "Well, kiddo, see you at eight thirt., eh?"

As long as she kept her work up to