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‘I’ll take her home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But–will she come?’

‘That’s up to you. If you can persuade her–Here she is now. I should start at once.’

Mrs Charlie, carrying the cup, came to the table. I was wondering what would be the first thing she would say. If it had been Charlie, of course he’d have said, ‘This is the life!’ but I looked for something snappier from her. If I had been in her place there were at least ten things I could have thought of to say, each nastier than the other.

She sat down and put the cup on the table. Then she gave the cup a long look. Then she drew a deep breath. Then she looked at Charlie.

‘Oh, Charlie, dear,’ she said, ‘I do wish I’d been dancing with you!’

Well, I’m not sure that that wasn’t just as good as anything I would have said. Charlie got right off the mark. After what I had told him, he wasn’t wasting any time.

‘Darling,’ he said, humbly, ‘you’re a wonder! What will they say about this at home?’ He did pause here for a moment, for it took nerve to say it; but then he went right on. ‘Mary, how would it be if we went home right away–first train tomorrow, and showed it to them?’

‘Oh, Charlie!’ she said.

His face lit up as if somebody had pulled a switch.

‘You will? You don’t want to stop on? You aren’t wild about New York?’

‘If there was a train,’ she said, ‘I’d start tonight. But I thought you loved the city so, Charlie?’

He gave a kind of shiver. ‘I never want to see it again in my life!’ he said.

‘You’ll excuse me,’ I said, getting up, ‘I think there’s a friend of mine wants to speak to me.’

And I crossed over to where Izzy had been standing for the last five minutes, making signals to me with his eyebrows.

You couldn’t have called Izzy coherent at first. He certainly had trouble with his vocal chords, poor fellow. There was one of those African explorer men used to come to Geisenheimer’s a lot when he was home from roaming the trackless desert, and he used to tell me about tribes he had met who didn’t use real words at all, but talked to one another in clicks and gurgles. He imitated some of their chatter one night to amuse me, and, believe me, Izzy Baermann started talking the same language now. Only he didn’t do it to amuse me.

He was like one of those gramophone records when it’s getting into its stride.

‘Be calm, Isadore,’ I said. ‘Something is troubling you. Tell me all about it.’

He clicked some more, and then he got it out.

‘Say, are you crazy? What did you do it for? Didn’t I tell you as plain as I could; didn’t I say it twenty times, when you came for the tickets, that yours was thirty-six?’

‘Didn’t you say my friend’s was thirty-six?’

‘Are you deaf? I said hers was ten.’

‘Then,’ I said handsomely, ‘say no more. The mistake was mine. It begins to look as if I must have got them mixed.’

He did a few Swedish exercises.

‘Say no more? That’s good! That’s great! You’ve got nerve. I’ll say that.’

‘It was a lucky mistake, Izzy. It saved your life. The people would have lynched you if you had given me the cup. They were solid for her.’

‘What’s the boss going to say when I tell him?’

‘Never mind what the boss will say. Haven’t you any romance in your system, Izzy? Look at those two sitting there with their heads together. Isn’t it worth a silver cup to have made them happy for life? They are on their honeymoon, Isadore. Tell the boss exactly how it happened, and say that I thought it was up to Geisenheimer’s to give them a wedding-present.’

He clicked for a spell.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Ah! now you’ve done it! Now you’ve given yourself away! You did it on purpose. You mixed those tickets on purpose. I thought as much. Say, who do you think you are, doing this sort of thing? Don’t you know that professional dancers are three for ten cents? I could go out right now and whistle, and get a dozen girls for your job. The boss’ll sack you just one minute after I tell him.’

‘No, he won’t, Izzy, because I’m going to resign.’

‘You’d better!’

‘That’s what I think. I’m sick of this place, Izzy. I’m sick of dancing. I’m sick of New York. I’m sick of everything. I’m going back to the country. I thought I had got the pigs and chickens clear out of my system, but I hadn’t. I’ve suspected it for a long, long time, and tonight I know it. Tell the boss, with my love, that I’m sorry, but it had to be done. And if he wants to talk back, he must do it by letter: Mrs John Tyson, Rodney, Maine, is the address.’