---" His slow, narrow, greenish eyes
stole toward the house across the road.

"Just like that," he said, after a slight pause; "that's the way the
little girl hit me. I'm on the level, Ben. First skirt I ever saw that
I wanted to find waiting dinner for me when I come home. Get me?"

"I don't know whether I do or not."

"Get this, then; she isn't all over paint; she's got freckles, thank
God, and she smells sweet as a daisy field. Ah, what the hell----" he
burst out between his parted teeth "--when every woman in New York
smells like a chorus girl! Don't I get it all day? The whole city
stinks like a star's dressing room. And I married one! And I'm
through. I want to get my breath and I'm getting it."

Stull's white features betrayed merely the morbid suffering of
indigestion; he said nothing and sucked his cigar.

"I'm through," repeated Brandes. "I want a home and a wife--the kind
that even a fly cop won't pinch on sight--the kind of little thing
that's over there in that old shack. Whatever I am, I don't want a
wife like me--nor kids, either."

Stull remained sullenly unresponsive.

"Call her a hick if you like. All right, I want that kind."

No comment from Stull, who was looking at the wrecked car.

"Understand, Ben?"

"I tell you I don't know whether I do or not!"

"Well, what don't you understand?"

"Nothin'.... Well, then, your falling for a kid like that, first crack
out o' the box. I'm honest; I don't understand it."

"She hit me that way--so help me God!"

"And you're on the level?"

"Absolutely, Ben."

"What about the old guy and the mother? Take 'em to live with you?"

"If she wants 'em."

Stull stared at him in uneasy astonishment:

"All right, Eddie. Only don't act foolish till Minna passes you up.
And get out of here or you will. If you're on the level, as you say
you are, you've got to mark time for a good long while yet----"

"Why?"

"You don't have to ask me that, do you?"

"Yes, I do. Why? I want to marry her, I tell you. I mean to. I'm
taking no chances that some hick will do it while I'm away. I'm going
to stay right here."

"And when the new car comes?"

"I'll keep her humming between here and Saratoga."

"And then what?"

Brandes' greenish eyes rested on the car and he smoked in silence for
a while. Then:

"Listen, Ben. I'm a busy man. I got to be back in town and I got to
have a wedding trip too. You know me, Ben. You know what I mean.
That's me. When I do a