“No, please let me have beer; you see I am thirsty. I have drank nothing but whisky all day.”
After this speech the man placed his elbows on the table and almost fell asleep.
“Come, cheer up, dearie!” said the girl with a slap on the man’s back.
“Yesh, I’m all right,” said the man, “only you see, I’m so tired let’s go into a wine room where people won’t see us.”
“All right,” said the girl, “but first let’s have this drink that’s coming, then we can tell our waiter where to find us.”
The girl had forgotten the “old guy,” and seemed only to remember the visions which floated through the air in the forms of tens and twenties. She would look at the man hopefully, then her eyes would fall on the vest pocket on the side furthest from her.
“How old are you?” asked the man, as he laid his arm along the back of her chair and gazed steadily into her face, after they had been enclosed in the wine room.
“No matter, you don’t care,” she returned, coyly.
“Yes, but I do. You see, I want you to tell me everything. How old are you; where were you born; when did you come to Chicago, all?” said the man, earnestly.
“I am twenty-four,” she muttered, and she probed the bottom of the glass with a toothpick for the cherry, which so persistently rolls around in a cocktail.