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‘This is the life!’ he said.

There’s always a point when that sort of man says that.

‘I suppose you come here quite a lot?’ he said.

‘Pretty often.’

I didn’t tell him that I came there every night, and that I came because I was paid for it. If you’re a professional dancer at Geisenheimer’s, you aren’t supposed to advertise the fact. The management thinks that if you did it might send the public away thinking too hard when they saw you win the Great Contest for the Love-r-ly Silver Cup which they offer later in the evening. Say, that Love-r-ly Cup’s a joke. I win it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mabel Francis wins it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It’s all perfectly fair and square, of course. It’s purely a matter of merit who wins the Love-r-ly Cup. Anybody could win it. Only somehow they don’t. And the coincidence of the fact that Mabel and I always do has kind of got on the management’s nerves, and they don’t like us to tell people we’re employed there. They prefer us to blush unseen.

‘It’s a great place,’ said Mr Ferris, ‘and New York’s a great place. I’d like to live in New York.’

‘The loss is ours. Why don’t you?’

‘Some city! But dad’s dead now, and I’ve got the drugstore, you know.’

He spoke as if I ought to remember reading about it in the papers.

‘And I’m making good with it, what’s more. I’ve got push and ideas. Say, I got married since I saw you last.’

‘You did, did you?’ I said. ‘Then what are you doing, may I ask, dancing on Broadway like a gay bachelor? I suppose you have left your wife at Hicks’ Corners, singing “Where is my wandering boy tonight”?’

‘Not Hicks’ Corners. Ashley, Maine. That’s where I live. My wife comes from Rodney…. Pardon me, I’m afraid I stepped on your foot.’

‘My fault,’ I said; ‘I lost step. Well, I wonder you aren’t ashamed even to think of your wife, when you’ve left her all alone out there while you come whooping it up in New York. Haven’t you got any conscience?’

‘But I haven’t left her. She’s here.’

‘In New York?’

‘In this restaurant. That’s her up there.’

I looked up at the balcony. There was a face hanging over the red plush rail. It looked to me as if it had some hidden sorrow. I’d noticed it before, when we were dancing around, and I had wondered what the trouble was. Now I began to see.

‘Why aren’t you dancing with her and giving her a good time, then?’ I said.

‘Oh, she’s having a good time.’

‘She doesn’t look it. She looks as if she would like to be down here, treading the measure.’

‘She doesn’t dance much.’

‘Don’t you have dances at Ashley?’

‘It’s different at home. She dances well enough for Ashley, but–well, this isn’t Ashley.’

‘I see. But you’re not like that?’

He gave a kind of smirk.

‘Oh, I’ve been in New York before.’

I could have bitten him, the sawn-off little rube! It made me mad. He was ashamed to dance in public with his wife–didn’t think her good enough for him. So he had dumped her in a chair, given her a lemonade, and told her to be good, and then gone off to have a good time. They could have had me arrested for what I was thinking just then.

The band began to play something else.

‘This is the life!’ said Mr Ferris. ‘Let’s do it again.’

‘Let somebody else do it,’ I said. ‘I’m tired. I’ll introduce you to some friends of mine.’

So I took him off, and whisked him on to some girls I knew at one of the tables.

‘Shake hands with my friend Mr Ferris,’ I said. ‘He wants to show you the latest steps. He does most of them on your feet.’

I could have betted on Charlie, the Debonair Pride of Ashley. Guess what he said? He said, ‘This is the life!’