irming her way across the
tight congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing
this elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme
anxiety to keep in view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along
with the crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band.

At Broadway, Fourteenth Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into
Union Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first
false feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across
this park Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a
run when the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred
others, and finally learning to keep its course by the faint but
distinguishing fact of a slight dent in the crown. At Broadway, some
blocks before that highway bursts into its famous flare, Mr. Batch, than
whom it was no other, turned off suddenly at right angles down into a
dim pocket of side-street and into the illuminated entrance of Ceiner's
Cafe Hungarian. Meals at all hours. Lunch, thirty cents. Dinner, fifty
cents. Our Goulash is Famous.

New York, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block
than any other area in the world, Babylon included, loves thus to dine
linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its
Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois
reads across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on
mission and commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy,
Illinois, fifteen minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown
Delmonico's. Spaghetti and red wine have set New York racing to reserve
its table d'hotes. All except the Latin race.

Jimmie Batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in
lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a
highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the
cosmopolite. His digestive range included _borsch_ and _chow main_;
_risotta_ and "ham and."

To-night, as he turned into Cafe Hungarian, Miss Slayback slowed and
drew back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining
office-building. She was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow
smaller from chill, was nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones.

The wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up
to it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally
one turned for a bac