rs its head out of its
snowy neck.

"I--I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second,
Hy. I--I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune
up--before--we get there. Just a minute, Hy."

"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"

"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."

"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do
you, Beauty?"

She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery,
and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each
other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.

"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann,
answer like a good girl. Love me?"

"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."

"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to
answer--love me?"

"Aw, now--"

"One--two--three--four--five--"

"Yes."

THE GOOD PROVIDER

Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton
nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the
arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and
motor-cars.

Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and
Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown
the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the
five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.

The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that
slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the
five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.

Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom
of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed.
Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts
bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring.
Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious
underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men
pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the
flower-seed catalogue.

The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his
thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down
plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.

For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of
Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until