"Let's walk up Sixth Avenue, Charley; the air feels fine."
"You ain't sore, are you, Charley? It was so jammed dancing, anyway."
"Honest, it's grand to be outdoors, ain't it? The stars and--and chilliness and--and--all!"
"Silly!" She squeezed his arm, and drew back, shamefaced.
His spirits rose. "You're a right loving little thing when you wanna be."
They laughed in duet; and before the plate-glass window of a furniture emporium they paused to regard a monthly-payment display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting-room, parlor, and dining-room of the home felicitous--a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling and waxen, in rocking-chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on the floor, completing the picture.
"Gee! it looks as snug as a bug in a rug! Looka what it says too: 'You Get the Girl; We'll Do the Rest!' Some little advertisement, ain't it? I got the girl all right--'ain't I, hon?"
"Look at the papa--slippers and all! And the kid! Look at the kid, Sweetness."
Her confusion nearly choked her and her rapid breath clouded the window-glass. "Yeh, Charley! Looka the little kid! Ain't he cute?"
An Elevated train crashed over their heads, drowning out her words; but her smile, which flickered like light over her face, persisted and her arm crept back into his. At each shop window they lingered, but the glow of the first one remained with her.
"Look, Sweetness--'Red Swag, the Train King! Performance going on now.' Wanna go in?"
They bought hot chestnuts, city harbingers of autumn, from a vender, and let fall the hulls as they walked. They drank strawberry ice-cream soda, pink with foam. Her resuscitation was complete; his spirits did not wane.
"I gotta like a queen pretty much not to get sore at a busted evening like this. It's a good thing the ticket didn't cost me nothing."
They paused before a white-lighted store-front, and read, laboriously:
TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE HOW TO PREVENT CONSUMPTION
"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."
"Let's--let's go in. See, it's free. Looka! it's all lit up and all; see, pictures and all."