I didn't.

'My name is Ferris.'

'It's a nice name, but it means nothing in my young life.'

'I was introduced to you last time I came here. We danced together.'

This seemed to bear the stamp of truth. If he was introduced to me, he

probably danced with me. It's what I'm at Geisenheimer's for.

'When was it?'

'A year ago last April.'

You can't beat these rural charmers. They think New York is folded up

and put away in camphor when they leave, and only taken out again when

they pay their next visit. The notion that anything could possibly have

happened since he was last in our midst to blur the memory of that

happy evening had not occurred to Mr Ferris. I suppose he was so

accustomed to dating things from 'when I was in New York' that he

thought everybody else must do the same.

'Why, sure, I remember you,' I said. 'Algernon Clarence, isn't it?'

'Not Algernon Clarence. My name's Charlie.'

'My mistake. And what's the great scheme, Mr Ferris? Do you want to

dance with me again?'

He did. So we started. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die,

as the poem says. If an elephant had come into Geisenheimer's and asked

me to dance I'd have had to do it. And I'm not saying that Mr Ferris

wasn't the next thing to it. He was one of those earnest, persevering

dancers--the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

I guess I was about due that night to meet someone from the country.

There still come days in the spring when the country seems to get a

stranglehold on me and start in pulling. This particular day had been

one of them. I got up in the morning and looked out of the window, and

the breeze just wrapped me round and began whispering about pigs and

chickens. And when I went out on Fifth Avenue there seemed to be

flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all

green, and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the

air--why, say, if there hadn't have been a big policeman keeping an eye

on me, I'd have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf.

And as soon as I got to Geisenheimer's they played that 'Michigan'

thing.

Why, Charlie from Squeedunk's 'entrance' couldn't have been better

worked up if he'd been a star in a Broadway show. The stage was just

waiting for him.

But somebody's always taking the joy out of life. I ought to have

remembered that the most metropolitan thing in the metropolis is a

rustic who's putting in a week there. We weren't thinking on the same

plane, Charlie and me. The way I had been feeling all day, what I

wanted to talk about was last season's crops. The subject he fancied

was this season's chorus-girls. Our souls didn't touch by a mile and a

half.

'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!'

And I left him, and went up to the balcony.

She was leaning with her elbows on the red plush, looking down on the

dancing-floor. They had just started another tune, and hubby was moving

around with one of the girls I'd introduced him to. She didn't have to

prove to me that she came from the country. I knew it. She was a little

bit of a thing, old-fashioned looking. She was dressed in grey, with

white muslin collar and cuffs, and her hair done simple. She had a

black hat.

I kind of hovered for awhile. It isn't the best thing I do, being shy;

as a general thing I'm more or less there with the nerve; but somehow I

sort of hesitated to charge in.

Then I braced up, and made for the vacant chair.

'I'll sit here, if you don't mind,' I said.

She turned in a startled way. I could see she was wondering who I was,

and what right I had there, but wasn't certain whether it might not be

city etiquette for strangers to come and dump themselves down and start

chatting. 'I've just been dancing with your husband,' I said, to ease

things along.

'I saw you.'

She fixed me with a pair of big brown eyes. I took one look at them,

and then I had to tell myself that it might be pleasant, and a relief

to my feelings, to take something solid and heavy and drop it over the

rail on to hubby, but the management wouldn't like it. That was how I

felt about him just then. The poor kid was doing everything with those

eyes except crying. She looked like a dog that's been kicked.

She looked away, and fiddled with the string of the electric light.

There was a hatpin lying on the table. She picked it up, and began to

dig at the red plush.

'Ah, come on sis,' I said; 'tell me all about it.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'You can't fool me. Tell me your troubles.'

'I don't know you.'

'You don't have to know a person to tell her your troubles. I sometimes

tell mine to the cat that camps out on the wall opposite my room. What

did you want to leave the country for, with summer coming on?'

She didn't answer, but I could see it coming, so I sat still and

waited. And presently she seemed to make up her mind that, even if it

was no business of mine, it would be a relief to talk about it.

'We're on our honeymoon. Charlie wanted to come to New York. I didn't

want to, but he was set on it. He's been here before.'

'So he told me.'

'He's wild about New York.'

'But you're not.'

'I hate it.'

'Why?'

She dug away at the red plush with the hatpin, picking out little bits

and dropping them over the edge. I could see she was bracing herself to

put me wise to the whole trouble. There's a time comes when things

aren't going right, and you've had all you can stand, when you have got

to tell somebody about it, no matter who it is.

'I hate New York,' she said getting it out at last with a rush. 'I'm

scared of it. It--it isn't fair Charlie bringing me here. I didn't want

to come. I knew what would happen. I felt it all along.'

'What do you think will happen, then?'

She must have picked away at least an inch of the red plush before she

answered. It's lucky Jimmy, the balcony waiter, didn't see her; it

would have broken his heart; he's as proud of that red plush as if he

had paid for it himself.

'When I first went to live at Rodney,' she said, 'two years ago--we

moved there from Illinois--there was a man there named Tyson--Jack

Tyson. He lived all alone and didn't seem to want to know anyone. I

couldn't understand it till somebody told me all about him. I can

understand it now. Jack Tyson married a Rodney girl, and they came to

New York for their honeymoon, just like us. And when they got there I

guess she got to comparing him with the fellows she saw, and comparing

the city with Rodney, and when she got home she just couldn't settle

down.'

'Well?'

'After they had been back in Rodney for a little while she ran away.

Back to the city, I guess.'

'I suppose he got a divorce?'

'No, he didn't. He still thinks she may come back to him.'

'He still thinks she will come back?' I said. 'After she has been away

three years!'

'Yes. He keeps her things just the same as she left them when she went

away, everything just the same.'

'But isn't he angry with her for what she did? If I was a man and a

girl treated me that way, I'd be apt to murder her if she tried to show

up again.'

'He wouldn't. Nor would I, if--if anything like that happened to me;

I'd wait and wait, and go on hoping all the time. And I'd go down to

the station to meet the train every afternoon, just like Jack Tyson.'

Something splashed on the tablecloth. It made me jump.

'For goodness' sake,' I said, 'what's your trouble? Brace up. I know

it's a sad story, but it's not your funeral.'

'It is. It is. The same thing's going to happen to me.'

'Take a hold on yourself. Don't cry like that.'

'I can't help it. Oh! I knew it would happen. It's happening right now.

Look--look at him.'

I glanced over the rail, and I saw what she meant. There was her

Charlie, dancing about all over the floor as if he had just discovered

that he hadn't lived till then. I saw him say something to the girl he

was dancing with. I wasn't near enough to hear it, but I bet it was

'This is the life!' If I had been his wife, in the same position as

this kid, I guess I'd have felt as bad as she did, for if ever a man

exhibited all the symptoms of incurable Newyorkitis, it was this

Charlie Ferris.

'I'm not like these New York girls,' she choked. 'I can't be smart. I

don't want to be. I just want to live at home and be happy. I knew it

would happen if we came to the city. He doesn't think me good enough

for him. He looks down on me.'

'Pull yourself together.'

'And I do love him so!'

Goodness knows what I should have said if I could have thought of

anything to say. But just then the music stopped, and somebody on the

floor below began to speak.

'Ladeez 'n' gemmen,' he said, 'there will now take place our great

Numbah Contest. This gen-u-ine sporting contest--'

It was Izzy Baermann making his nightly speech, introducing the

Love-r-ly Cup; and it meant that, for me, duty called. From where I sat

I could see Izzy looking about the room, and I knew he was looking for

me. It's the management's nightmare that one of these evenings Mabel or

I won't show up, and somebody else will get away with the Love-r-ly

Cup.

'Sorry I've got to go,' I said. 'I have to be in this.'

And then suddenly I had the great idea. It came to me like a flash, I

looked at her, crying there, and I looked over the rail at Charlie the

Boy Wonder, and I knew that this was where I got a stranglehold on my

place in the Hall of Fame, along with the great thinkers of the age.

'Come on,' I said. 'Come along. Stop crying and powder your nose and

get a move on. You're going to dance this.'

'But Charlie doesn't want to dance with me.'

'It may have escaped your notice,' I said, 'but your Charlie is not the

only man in New York, or even in this restaurant. I'm going to dance

with Charlie myself, and I'll introduce you to someone who can go

through the movements. Listen!'

'The lady of each couple'--this was Izzy, getting it off his

diaphragm--'will receive a ticket containing a num-bah. The dance will

then proceed, and the num-bahs will be eliminated one by one, those

called out by the judge kindly returning to their seats as their

num-bah is called. The num-bah finally remaining is the winning

num-bah. The contest is a genuine sporting contest, decided purely by

the skill of the holders of the various num-bahs.' (Izzy stopped

blushing at the age of six.) 'Will ladies now kindly step forward and

receive their num-bahs. The winner, the holder of the num-bah left on

the floor when the other num-bahs have been eliminated' (I could see

Izzy getting more and more uneasy, wondering where on earth I'd got

to), 'will receive this Love-r-ly Silver Cup, presented by the

management. Ladies will now kindly step forward and receive their

num-bahs.'

I turned to Mrs Charlie. 'There,' I said, 'don't you want to win a

Love-r-ly Silver Cup?'

'But I couldn't.'

'You never know your luck.'

'But it isn't luck. Didn't you hear him say it's a contest decided

purely by skill?'

'Well, try your skill, then.' I felt as if I could have shaken her.

'For goodness' sake,' I said, 'show a little grit. Aren't you going to

stir a finger to keep your Charlie? Suppose you win, think what it will

mean. He will look up to you for the rest of your life. When he starts

talking about New York, all you will have to say is, "New York? Ah,

yes, that was the town I won that Love-r-ly Silver Cup in, was it not?"

and he'll drop as if you had hit him behind the ear with a sandbag.

Pull yourself together and try.'