color."

"Say, if you're going to catch that four-eighteen you've got to
break somebody's speed limit between here and track ten. Run along,
Charley-boy, and Merry Christmas."

But Mr. Charles Scully swung to a halt, poured his armful of packages
into a wire basket of six-city-postcard-views for ten cents, swung
open his overcoat with a sprinkling of snow on its slick-napped velvet
collar, lifted his small black mustache in a smile.

"Black-eyes, I'd miss three trains for you."

"There's not another until the four-forty."

"I should worry. Anyway, for all I know you've changed your mind and are
coming out with me to-night, little one."

The quick blood ran up into her small face, dyeing it, and she withdrew
from his nearing features.

"I have not! Gee! you're about as square as a doughnut, you are."

"Jumping Juniper, can't a fellow miss his train just to wish a little
beauty like you a Merry Christmas? But on the level, I want to take you
out home with me to-night; honest I do, little spitfire."

"Crank up there, Charley-boy; you got about thirty seconds to make that
train in."

"Gets you sore every time I ask you out, don't it, black-eyes? Talk
about your little tin saints!"

"Say, if you was any slicker you'd slide."

"You can't scare me with those black eyes."

"Can't I, my brave boy! Say, you'd want to quarantine the dictionary if
you found smallpox in it, that's how hard you are to scare."

"Well, of all the lines of talk, if you 'ain't got the greatest. Cute is
no name for you."

"And say, the place where you clerk must be a classy clothes-parlor,
Charley-boy."

"Right-o, little one. If you ever pass by the Brown Haberdashery, on
Twenty-third Street, drop in, and I'll buy you a lunch."

"Tra-la! Where did you get that checked suit? And I'll bet you flag the
train out at Glendale, where you live, with that tie. Oh, you Checkers!"

"Some class to me, eh, kiddo?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that."

He leaned closer. His smile had an uplift like a crescent and a slight
depression in his left cheek, too low for a dimple, twinkled when he
smiled, like an adjacent star.

"Take it from me, Queenie, these glad rags are my stock in trade. In my
line I got to sport them. At home I'm all to the overalls. If my boss
was to see the old red wool smoking-jacket I wear around the house, he'd
fire me for burlesquing the business."

"Well, of all the nerve! Let go my hand."

"Didn't know I had it, little one