Gertie snickered. "It isn't done in our best sets, but I'm
on. I've got a can of sardines and an orange. I'll be ready in
six minutes."

She was, too. She wiped off the cold cream and salt tears
with a dry towel, did her hair in a schoolgirl braid and tied it
with a big bow, and dressed herself in a black skirt and a baby
blue dressing sacque. The Kid Next Door was waiting outside in the
hall. His gray sweater covered a multitude of sartorial
deficiencies. Gertie stared at him, and he stared at Gertie in the
sickly blue light of the boarding-house hall, and it took her
one-half of one second to discover that she liked his mouth, and
his eyes, and the way his hair was mussed.

"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid Next Door, in
surprise.

Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the first man that's
been deceived by a pig-tail braid and a baby blue waist. I could
locate those two gray hairs for you with my eyes shut and my feet
in a sack. Come on, boy. These Robert W. Chambers situations make
me nervous."

Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a
passion for detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great
city at night, when a few million people within it are sleeping, or
ought to be. They work in the clang of a distant owl car, and the
roar of an occasional "L" train, and the hollow echo of the
footsteps of the late passer-by. They go elaborately into
description, and are strong on the brooding hush, but the thing has