ue. Go on up and grab a box for yourselves. The house owes you
fellers a drink, it seems to me. Can I send you up a bottle of Pumbry?
The fizzy stuff's none too good for you, I guess."

He appeared disappointed when Dick told him to send up two lemonades,
and turned back to lean across the bar and hail some new arrival. The
partners went up and seated themselves in one of the cardboard stalls
dignified by the name of boxes, and, leaning over the railing in front
between the gilt-embroidered, red-denim curtains, looked down on the
dancers. Two or three of their own men were there, grimly waltzing
with girls who tried to appear cheerful and joyous.

Shrill laughter echoed now and then, and when the music changed a man
with a voice like a megaphone shouted: "Gents! Git pardners for the
square sets!" and the scene shifted into one of more regular pattern,
where different individuals were more conspicuous. Some of the more
hilarious cavorted, and tried clumsy shuffles on the corners when the
raucous-voiced man howled: "Bala-a-ance all!" and others merely jigged
up and down with stiff jerks and muscle-bound limbs, gravely, and with
a desperate, earnest endeavor to enjoy themselves.

A glowering, pockmarked man, evidently seeking some one with no good
intent, pulled open the curtains at the back of the box, and stared at
them in half-drunken gravity; then discovering his mistake, with a
clumsy "Beg pardon, gents," let the draperies drop, and passed on down
the row.

Across from them, in the opposite box, some man from the placers, with
his face tanned to a copper color, was hilariously surrounding himself
with all the girls he could induce to become his guests, holding a box
party of his own. He was leaning over the rail and bellowing so loudly
that his voice could be heard above the din: "Hey, down there! You,
Tim! Bring me up a bottle of the bubbly water--two bottles--five--no,
send up a case. Whoop-ee! Pay on seventeen! This is where little Hank
Jones celebrates! Come on up, girls. Here's where no men is wanted.
It's me all by my little lonely!"

Some one threw a garland of paper flowers round his neck, which he
esteemed as a high honor, and shook it out over the floor below, where
all the dancers were becoming confused in an endeavor simultaneously
to watch his antics, and keep their places in the dance.

"The most disgusting object in the world is a man who drinks!" came a
cold voice behind them, and they turned to