"Cut it!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm as good as you are and a damn
straighter. What I get I earn, and I don't steal it."

The Lizard grinned. "I guess you're right at that; but don't try to
pull him down any lower than he is. He is coming up again some day to
where he belongs."

"I ain't going to try to pull him down," said the girl. "And anyhow,
when were you made his godfather?"

Jimmy saw Eva almost daily for many weeks. He saw her at her
post-meridian breakfast--sober and subdued; he saw her later in the
evening, in various stages of exhilaration, but at those times she did
not come to his table and seldom if ever did he catch her eye.

They talked a great deal while she breakfasted, and he learned to like
the girl and to realize that she possessed two personalities. The one
which he liked dominated her at breakfast; the other which he loathed
guided her actions later in the evening. Neither of them ever referred
to those hours of her life, and as the days passed Jimmy found himself
looking forward to the hour when Little Eva would come to Feinheimer's
for her breakfast.




CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTMAS EVE.