terspersed with
delicatessens, interior decorators, and dressmaking establishments.
Florian was fond of boasting when he came down to the store in the
morning, after a hot, muggy July night, "My place is like a summer
resort. Breeze just sweeps through it. I have to have the covers on."

Sometimes Mrs. Pet, his landlady, made him a pitcher of lemonade and
brought it up to him, and he sipped it, looking out over the city,
soothed by its roar, fascinated by its glow and brilliance. Mrs. Pet
said it was a pleasure to have him around, he was so neat.

Florian was neat. Not only neat, but methodical. He had the same
breakfast every week-day morning at Child's; half a grapefruit, one
three-minute egg, coffee, rolls. On Sunday morning he had bacon and
eggs. It was almost automatic. Speaking of automatics, he never took his
meals at one of those modern mechanical feeders. Though at Child's he
never really beheld the waitress with his seeing eye, he liked to have
her slap his dishes down before him with a genial crash. A gentleman has
his little foibles, and being waited on at meal-time was one of his.
Occasionally, to prove to himself that he wasn't one of those fogies who
get in a rut, he ordered wheat cakes with maple syrup for breakfast.
They always disagreed with him.

She was a wise young woman, Myra.

Perhaps Florian, as he sat by his window that Sunday night of Myra's
outburst, thought on these things. But he would not admit to himself
whither his thinking led. And presently he turned back the spread,
neatly, and turned out the light, and opened the window a little wider,
and felt of his chin, as men do, though the next shave is eight hours
distant, and slept, and did not dream of white throats as he had
secretly hoped he would.

And next morning, at eleven, a very wonderful thing began to happen.
Next morning, at eleven, Miss Jessie Heath loped (well, it can't be
helped. That describes it exactly) into the broad aisles of the fifth
floor. She had been coming in a great deal, lately. The Western trip, no
doubt.

Descriptions of people are clumsy things, at best, and stop one's story.
But Jessie Heath must have her paragraph. A half-dozen lines ought to do
it. Well--she was the kind of girl who always goes around with a couple
of Airedales, and in woollen stockings, low shoes and mannish shirts,
and shell-rimmed glasses, and you felt she wore Ferris waists. Her hair
was that ashen blonde with no glint of gold in it