d, 'if you can't be bright and smiling and cheerful
when you take me out, why do you come round at all? Was I wrong or
right, dearie?"

The girl behind the counter heartily endorsed her conduct. "Once you let
a man think he could use you as a door-mat, where were you?"

"What happened then, honey?"

"Well, after that we went to the movies."

Archie started convulsively. The change from his dollar-bill leaped in
his hand. Some of it sprang overboard and tinkled across the floor, with
the brigand in pursuit. A monstrous suspicion had begun, to take root in
his mind.

"Well, we got good seats, but--well, you know how it is, once things
start going wrong. You know that hat of mine, the one with the daisies
and cherries and the feather--I'd taken it off and given it him to hold
when we went in, and what do you think that fell'r'd done? Put it on the
floor and crammed it under the seat, just to save himself the trouble of
holding it on his lap! And, when I showed him I was upset, all he said
was that he was a pitcher and not a hatstand!"

Archie was paralysed. He paid no attention to the hat-check boy, who
was trying to induce him to accept treasure-trove to the amount of
forty-five cents. His whole being was concentrated on this frightful
tragedy which had burst upon him like a tidal wave. No possible room for
doubt remained. "Gus" was the only Gus in New York that mattered, and
this resolute and injured female before him was the Girl Friend, in
whose slim hands rested the happiness of New York's baseball followers,
the destiny of the unconscious Giants, and the fate of his thousand
dollars. A strangled croak proceeded from his parched lips.

"Well, I didn't say anything at the moment. It just shows how them
movies can work on a girl's feelings. It was a Bryant Washburn film, and
somehow, whenever I see him on the screen, nothing else seems to matter.
I just get that goo-ey feeling, and couldn't start a fight if you asked
me to. So we go off to have a soda, and I said to him, 'That sure was a
lovely film, Gus!' and would you believe me, he says straight out that
he didn't think it was such a much, and he thought Bryant Washburn was a
pill! A pill!" The Girl Friend's penetrating voice shook with emotion.

"He never!" exclaimed the shocked cigar-stand girl.

"He did, if I die the next moment! I wasn't more than half-way through
my vanilla and maple, but I got up without a word and left him. And I
ain't seen a sight o