refused to pay him; sometimes the escort gave him more than he had asked. At ten o'clock at night he had only one flower left.
An inspection of the most brightly lighted of the nearby cafes revealed a young lady with abnormally red cheeks and remarkably black eyebrows and eye-lashes in conversation with a gentleman at a table not too far from the door. He went in and put the flower on the table in front of her.
"What a pretty boy!" she said.
She stretched out a plump and not clean hand toward him with a gesture which enveloped him in a breath of strong perfume, and he backed rapidly away.
"Five cents," he said.
"Catch him," she directed the man with her. "I want to kiss him."
As he continued to back anxiously toward the door, but still keeping a proprietorial gaze upon the flower, she fumbled in her pocket book and produced twenty-five cents.
"I'll give you this for the flower," she offered, "if you'll let me kiss you."
