"Permission to call!" echoed small eyes, with a snigger. "Did he say
anything about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto
afterward?"

"Oh, cheese it!" said Masie, wearily. "You've been used to swell
things, I don't think. You've had a swelled head ever since that
hose-cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint. No, he never
mentioned the Waldorf; but there's a Fifth Avenue address on his
card, and if he buys the supper you can bet your life there won't be
no pigtail on the waiter what takes the order."

As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his
electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart.
He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the
twenty-nine years of his life. And that the object of it should make
so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, though it was
a step toward his desires, tortured him with misgivings.

Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not know that her home is
often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to
overflowing with kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the
park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the
most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my
lady inside her tapestried chamber.

One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and
Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park. They found a
bench, tree-shadowed and secluded, and sat there.