"Yes, Jimmie, but--"

"Didn't I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you even after the big show was over, and wouldn't I have blown you to yellow instead of the red if you hadn't been a little cheap skate and wanted the red? Didn't I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn't I blow you for proper?"

"It was swell, Jimmie!"

"Well, I'm going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It's Christmas Eve and--"

"Yes, it's Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he--he had one of his bad hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she--she's too little to know she's getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee--a--a kid oughtta have something--a tree or something."

He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. "It's _you_ oughtta have something, Doll."

"I--I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got home, he--he was laying there like a rag."

"I like you, Doll. I'm going to blow in the stack of my winnings on you--that's how much I like you. There ain't nothing I wouldn't do for a little filly like you."

"Jimmie!"

"There ain't!"

"Aw!"

"You wouldn't be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn't sneaked off two years ago and done it while I wasn't looking. Nearly two whole years you lemme lose track of you! That ain't a nice way to treat a fellow that likes you."

"We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the department two months ago, after he got so bad. 'Ain't I told you how things just kinda happened?"

"I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in the gents' furnishing that wasn't wide from nothing but padding. I could have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could have told you."

"Jimmie, ain't you ashamed! Jimmie!"

"Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain't real on that true-blue stuff, Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you're bustin' to lemme blow you. That's what you get, sweetness, when you don't ask your Uncle Fuller first. If you'd have asked me I could have told you he was weak in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you'd be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and supportin' a--"

"You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you--"

"Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a rose--a whole bouquet of them."

"You--you don't know nothing about him. He--he never knew he had a lung till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents' furnishing over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him."

"Sure, he didn't, Doll; no harm meant. That's right, stand by him. I like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me you'd have married him if he'd had three b.u.m lungs, that crazy you was!"

"Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn't sound we--I wouldn't be in this mess, I--we--I wouldn't!"

Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.

"Poor little filly!"

More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of her self-compa.s.sion. "You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain't cryin', only I'm dog tired from nursin' and drudgin', drudgin' and nursin'."

"Hard luck, little un!"

"Him layin' there and me tryin' to--to make things meet. You gotta excuse me, Jimmie, I'm done up."

"That's why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can't bear to see a little filly like you runnin' with the odds dead agin her."

"You been swell to me, Jimmie."

"The sky's my limit, Doll."

"Maybe it wasn't right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him layin' there, and the kid and all, but a girl's gotta have something, don't she, Jimmie? A girl that's got on her shoulders what I got has gotta have something--a laugh now and then!"

"That's the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to."

"Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my hat for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the other night, just like they didn't cost nothing--honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole night's nursin'. Honest, I felt like in the old days before--before I was married."

"Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll--if you hadn't pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage--there ain't nothing I wouldn't have done for you."

"I--I didn't mean nothing, Jimmie."

"I ain't sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did, even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll, you!"

"Aw--you!"

"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen.

I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"

"I--I can't, Jimmie. I--'S-s-s-s-h!"

A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge, patient.

Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds, then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand--light, lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from G.o.d's own loom, from G.o.d's own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.

Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and snow-clumped shoes pa.s.sing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her throat as if to choke its gasp.

"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"

Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.

"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you and me!"

"Snowin'!"

"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab by the hour. I'm--"

"Snowin'!"

She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.

"He--he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if--if we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South before the first one--South, where the sun shines and he could feel it clear through him, he--Oh, ain't I--ain't I in a mess!"

"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and throbbing throat. "Poor little filly, all winded!"