Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his
application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his
nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of
his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete.
The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity;
and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual
plane of communication from the beginning.

He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she
trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room
with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that
a glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that
boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good
enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker."

"Well," she said. "It certainly shows that you have imagination. It
gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow."

They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human
wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland
gone into vaudeville.

With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment
Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized
delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket
parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his
feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the
booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on
the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The
publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous
attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that
could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the
air to gain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But
what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude,
the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling
itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the
ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The
vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of
repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him
strongly.

In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence
by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy
eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were
saying that the