h as that?"

"I've hated some of it."

"Ah, well! You needn't be bothered with it long."

Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. "Haven't you
got any more use for me?"

"I'm afraid--" it was not easy to put it into the right words--"I'm
afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in--in a false position
with no necessity for doing so."

It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. "Do you mean that
you didn't need me to be--to be a shame and a disgrace to you _at
all_?"

"Did I put it in that way?"

"Well, didn't you?"

The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing
to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and
shabby little "drab."

"I don't know what I said then. I was--I was upset."

"And you're upset very easy, ain't you?" She corrected herself
quickly: "aren't you?"

"I suppose that's true. What of it?"

"Oh, nothing. I--I just happen to know a way you can get over that--if
you want to."

He smiled. "I'm afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated--I may as
well admit that I'm nervous--you saw it for yourself----"

"Oh, I saw you was--you were--sick up here--" she touched her
forehead--"as soon as you begun to talk to me."

Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage.
"So that you understand how I could go off the hooks----"

"Sure! My mother'd go off 'em the least little thing, till--till she
done--till she did--the way I told her."

"Then some of these days I may ask you to--but just now perhaps we'd
better talk about----"

"When I'm to get out."

Her bluntness of expression hurt him. "That's not the way I should
have put it----"

"But it's the way you'd 'a' meant, isn't it?"

He was the more disconcerted because she said this gently, with the
same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid
bending over the unconscious prince.

The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: "You mustn't think
me more brutal than I am----"

"Oh, I don't think you're brutal. You're just a little dippy,
ain't--aren't--you? But that's because you let yourself go. If when
you feel it comin' on you'd just--but perhaps you'd rather _be_ dippy.
Would you?"

If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny
flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the
difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.

"I don't know that I would, bu