er," and it was in this
assumed capacity that he had sought Mrs. Fieldstone and had at length
persuaded her to go down to Sam's with him.

"A young man of your age ought to be home and in bed long before this,"
she said as they turned the corner of Sixth Avenue precisely at
half-past eleven.

"I got my duties to perform the same as anybody else, Mrs. Fieldstone;
and what Mr. Bienenflug tells me to do I must do," he retorted. "Also,
you should remember what I told you about not eating nothing on me
except oysters and a glass of beer, maybe, as I forgot to bring much
money with me from the office."

"I didn't come down here to eat," Mrs. Fieldstone said, with a catch in
her voice.

"Even so, Mrs. Fieldstone, don't you try to start nothing with this
woman, as you never know what you're stacking up against in cafes,"
Ralph warned her. "Young Hartigan, the featherweight champion of the
world, used to be a--now--coat boy in Sam's; and they got several
waiters working there who has also graduated from the preliminary
class."

"I wouldn't open my head at all," Mrs. Fieldstone promised; and with
this assurance they entered the most southerly of the three doors to
Sam's.

One of the penalties of being one of the few restaurants in New York
permitted to do business between one A.M. and six A.M. was that Sam's
Cafe and Restaurant did a light business between six P.M. and one A.M.;
and consequently at eleven-thirty P.M. J. Montgomery Fieldstone and
Miss Goldie Raymond were the only occupants of the south dining-room.

It is true that there were other customers seated in the middle and
north dining-rooms--conspicuously Mr. Sidney Rossmore and Miss Vivian
Haig; and it was this young lady who, though hidden from J. Montgomery
Fieldstone's view, formed one of the subsidiary heads of his discourse
with Miss Raymond.

"Well, I wish you could 'a' seen her, kid!" he said to Miss Raymond.
"My little girl seven years old has took of Professor Rheinberger plain
and fancy dancing for three weeks only, and she's a regular Pavlowa
already alongside of Haig. She's heavy on her feet like an elephant!"

"You should tell me that!" Miss Raymond exclaimed. "Ain't I seen her?"

"And yet you claim I considered giving her this part in the new piece,"
Fieldstone said indignantly. "I'm honestly surprised at you, kid!"

"Oh, you'd do anything to save fifty dollars a week on your salary
list," she retorted.

"About that fifty dollars, listen t