The boys are waiting for me to come
back, so's we can go on. They've got some swell rooms in a
hotel up in Forty-second Street. Let's get a move on."

The bartender served the third drink and Susan paid for them,
the other girl insisting on paying for the one she was having
when Susan came. Susan's head was whirling. Her spirits were
spiraling up and up. Her pale lips were wreathed in a reckless
smile. She felt courageous for adventure--any adventure. Her
capital had now sunk to three quarters and a five-cent piece.
They issued forth, talking without saying anything, laughing
without knowing or caring why. Life was a joke--a coarse, broad
joke--but amusing if one drank enough to blunt any refinement of
sensibility. And what was sensibility but a kind of snobbishness?
And what more absurd than snobbishness in an outcast?

"That's good whiskey they had, back there," said Susan.

"Good? Yes--if you don't care what you say."

"If you don't want to care what you say or do," explained Susan.

"Oh, all booze is good for that," said the girl.

CHAPTER VI

THEY went through to Broadway and there stood waiting for a
car, each under her own umbrella. "Holy Gee!" cried Susan's
new acquaintance. "Ain't this rain a soaker?"

It was coming in sheets, bent and torn and driven horizontally
by the wind. The umbrella, sheltering the head somewhat, gave
a wholly false impression of protection. Both girls were soon
sopping wet. But they were more than cheerful about it; the
whiskey made them indifferent to external ills as they warmed
themselves by its bright fire. At that time a famous and much
envied, admired and respected "captain of industry," having
looted the street-car systems, was preparing to loot them over
again by the familiar trickery of the receivership and the
reorganization. The masses of the people were too ignorant to
know what was going on; the classes were too busy, each man of
each of them, about his own personal schemes for graft of one
kind and another. Thus, the street-car service was a joke and
a disgrace. However, after four or five minutes a north-bound
car appeared.

"But it won't stop," cried Susan. "It's jammed."

"That's why it will stop," replied her new acquaintance. "You
don't suppose a New York conductor'd miss a chance to put his
passengers more on the bum than ever?"

She was right, at least as to the main point; and the conductor
with much free handling of the