feet and put his red face with its thin broken nose close to hers and looked in her black eyes with his pale gray eyes. He tapped her arm sharply. "Hello Francie. . . . How's my lil girl?"
They walked back towards Manhattan, the way she had come. Under them the river glinted through the mist. A big steamer drifted by slowly, lights already lit; over the edge of the walk they looked down the black smokestacks.
"Was it a boat as big as that you went overseas on Dutch?"
"Bigger 'n that."
"Gee I'd like to go."
"I'll take you over some time and show you all them places over there . . . I went to a lot of places that time I went A.W.O.L."
In the L station they hesitated. "Francie got any jack on you?"
"Sure I got a dollar. . . . I ought to keep that for tomorrer though."
"All I got's my last quarter. Let's go eat two fiftyfive cent dinners at that chink place . . . That'll be a dollar ten."
"I got to have a nickel to get down to the office in the mornin."
"Oh Hell! Goddam it I wish we could have some money."
"Got anything lined up yet?"
"Wouldn't I have told ye if I had?"
"Come ahead I've got a half a dollar saved up in my room. I can take carfare outa that." She changed the dollar and put two nickels into the turnstile. They sat down in a Third Avenue train.
"Say Francie will they let us dance in a khaki shirt?"
"Why not Dutch it looks all right."
"I feel kinder fussed about it."
The jazzband in the restaurant was playing Hindustan. It smelled of chop suey and Chinese sauce. They slipped into a booth. Slickhaired young men and little bobhaired
