, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first
glance."

"Look here, Ida; please don't think I'm getting fresh--" He was hotly
reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child,
and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen
by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: "Don't think I'm getting
fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little
dinner together some evening."

"I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to
take me out. But maybe I could to-night."

IV

There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a
quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an
educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and
not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts
of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening,
and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn't even do that. Ida was
complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be
hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it.

Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he
HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs,
stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the
sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed
thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and
interestingly wicked about a taxicab.

But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh,
she said, "A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!"

"I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night."

"Oh," she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.

All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend,
but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable
indignation she narrated her retorts to "that fresh head-barber" and the
drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she
was "better at gassing than at hoof-paring."

At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The
head-waiter refused to understand who George F. Babbitt was. They
sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about
baseball. When he tried to hold Ida's hand she said with bright
friendliness, "Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering." But they came
out in