that you don't care a rap about
Billie Hawker. Ah, Florinda!"

It seemed that the girl's throat suffered a slight contraction. "Well,
and what if I do?" she demanded finally.

"Have a cigarette?" answered Grief.

Florinda took a cigarette, lit it, and, perching herself on a divan,
which was secretly a coal box, she smoked fiercely.

"What if I do?" she again demanded. "It's better than liking one of you
dubs, anyhow."

"Oh, Splutter, you poor little outspoken kid!" said Wrinkle in a sad
voice.

Grief searched among the pipes until he found the best one. "Yes,
Splutter, don't you know that when you are so frank you defy every law
of your sex, and wild eyes will take your trail?"

"Oh, you talk through your hat," replied Florinda. "Billie don't care
whether I like him or whether I don't. And if he should hear me now, he
wouldn't be glad or give a hang, either way. I know that." The girl
paused and looked at the row of plaster casts. "Still, you needn't be
throwing it at me all the time."

"We didn't," said Wrinkles indignantly. "You threw it at yourself."

"Well," continued Florinda, "it's better than liking one of you dubs,
anyhow. He makes money and----"

"There," said Grief, "now you've hit it! Bedad, you've reached a point
in eulogy where if you move again you will have to go backward."

"Of course I don't care anything about a fellow's having money----"

"No, indeed you don't, Splutter," said Pennoyer.

"But then, you know what I mean. A fellow isn't a man and doesn't stand
up straight unless he has some money. And Billie Hawker makes enough so
that you feel that nobody could walk over him, don't you know? And there
isn't anything jay about him, either. He's a thoroughbred, don't you
know?"

After reflection, Pennoyer said, "It's pretty hard on the rest of us,
Splutter."

"Well, of course I like him, but--but----"

"What?" said Pennoyer.

"I don't know," said Florinda.

Purple Sanderson lived in this room, but he usually dined out. At a
certain time in his life, before he came to be a great artist, he had
learned the gas-fitter's trade, and when his opinions were not identical
with the opinions of the art managers of the greater number of New York
publications he went to see a friend who was a plumber, and the opinions
of this man he was thereafter said to respect. He frequented a very neat
restaurant on Twenty-third Street. It was known that on Saturday nights
Wrinkles, Grief, and Pennoyer fr