"Precious!" she countered.
"Honeybunch!"
"Sweetie!"
Then he felt a hand fall upon his shoulder and turned around. A sweet, motherly-looking, elderly lady from the next table had laid a hand upon him and another upon the amazed girl beside him and was saying in a blissful voice, "Isn't it wonderful to be in love?"
For an instant Peggy looked confused. It was enough for Harold, watching her. He realized how his words must have sounded and a panic seized him. Always bashful around girls, always timid with strangers, he blushed furiously.
He jumped to his feet and, with an exclamation and look of terror, rushed out into the aisle of the diner. Without a look ahead or behind he fled. Fled straight into the fat stomach of a husky waiter balancing a tray of eatables aloft, sending the waiter sprawling against an adjacent table and scattering the food all over the surrounding region of the car. The head waiter started into the car from the kitchen entrance and narrowly missed being rent asunder by the flying Harold. A pair of late diners waiting out in the narrow aisle by the kitchen were bumped into.
Not until he had reached what he was sure
