te evening fell over the room.

"What a grand old pair, Birdie!"

"Yes," she said, softly--very softly.

Silence.

"Say--Birdie! Say--"

"What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Oh!" The red in her face ran down into the square-shape neck of her
dress.

Silence.

"Aw, look what you did, Marcus! You burnt the toe of your shoe!"

"Say, Birdie, what I started to say when your mamma and papa come
in--er--"

"Yes?"

"What I started to say was, so long as a fellow's got intentions it's
all right for him to call on a girl--er--regular, like this." Her soft
breathing answered him. "But--well, I mustn't--I ain't got the right to
come round here any more."

She looked at him like a startled nymph.

"What is it?"

"So long as I had intentions it was all right, I say; but--well, now I
ain't."

"Ain't what?" Her breath came more rapidly between her lips.

"I was starting to say before they came in, Birdie--I came here straight
from the office to tell you--even maw don't know it yet--_I've lost
out!_ Loeb's daughter is engaged, and he's going to put his new
son-in-law from Cleveland in the Newark factory."

"Marcus!"

"Yes! You can't be so sore as I am--a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar job
almost in my hand, and then this had to happen! The little raise I get
now don't help. I can't ask a girl to marry me on fifteen hundred when I
expected twice that much--not a girl like you!"

Birdie placed the palm of her hand flat against her cheek; the stars in
her eyes had vanished in the light of understanding.

"Such a mean trick!" she gasped. "How you've built up their trade for
them--and now such a mean trick!"

"I was so sure all along, after what Loeb told me last month. Only last
week I says to maw I'll ask you this week right after I know for
certain. That sure I--was."

His voice trailed off at the end. She sat watching the flames, her
shoulders slightly stooped and her eyes quiet.

"You ain't so sorry as I am, Birdie. Believe me, I could die right now!
With you it ain't so bad--you got plenty good chances yet. But if you
knew what feelings I got for you! With me there ain't no more Birdies."

She turned her head slowly toward him; her throat throbbing and a
delicate pink under her skin.

"I should care, Marcus!" she said, softly.

"What?"

"I should care!" she repeated. "We should live little then, if we can't
live big--live little."

"What do you mean, Birdie?"

She regarded and invited him with he