her up about lunch time.

"Let's see," she 'phoned, "suppose you meet me about 12:30 at the Maison
Noir. You know, West Fifty-sixth. And if I'm having a dress fitted on
the second floor just wait downstairs for me, will you, Torchy?"

"In among all them young lady models?" says I. "Not a chance. You'll
find me hangin' up outside. And don't make it more'n half an hour behind
schedule, Vee, for this is one of my busy days."

"Oh, very well," says she careless.

So that's how I came to be backed up in the lee of the doorway at 12:45
when this stranger with the mild blue eyes and the chin dimple eases in
with the friendly hail.

"Excuse me," says he, "but haven't we met somewhere before?"

Which is where my fatal gift for rememberin' faces and forgettin' names
comes into play. After giving him the quick up and down I had him placed
but not tagged.

"Not quite," says I. "But we lived in the same apartment buildin' a
couple of years back. Third floor west, wasn't you?"

"That's it," says he. "And I believe I heard you'd just been married."

"Yes, we did have a chatty janitor," says I. "You were there with your
mother, from somewhere out on the Coast. We almost got to the noddin'
point when we met in the elevator, didn't we?"

"If we did," says he, "that was the nearest I came to getting acquainted
with anyone in New York. It's the lonesomest hole I was ever in.
Say----"

And inside of three minutes he's told me all about it; how he'd brought
Mother on from Seattle to have a heart specialist give her a three
months' treatment that hadn't been any use, and how he'd come East alone
this time to tie up a big spruce lumber contract with the airplane
department. Also he reminds me that he is Crosby Rhodes and writes the
name of the hotel where he's stopping on his card. It's almost like a
reunion with an old college chum.

"But how do you happen to be sizin' up a show window like this?" says I,
indicatin' the Maison Noir's display of classy gowns. "Got somebody back
home that you might take a few samples to?"

His big, square-cut face sort of pinks up and his mild blue eyes take on
kind of a guilty look as he glances over his shoulder at the window.
"Not a soul," says he. "The fact is, I'm not much of a ladies' man. Been
in the woods too much, I suppose. All the same, though, I've always
thought that if ever I ran across just the right girl----" Here he
scrapes his foot and works up that fussed expression again.