"Good!" cried Mr. Morris, looking around as if he expected us all to share his joy over the glad tidings. "Girl or boy?"
"Girl," the gipsy player told him. "T'ree boys we had. Now we haf girl for change. We t'ink, my wife and I, we make her noospaper woman. Goot idea, nicht wahr?"
He laughed, and Mr. Morris laughed with him. "Fine," he declared. "Send her down to the Searchlight office in a week or two. We'll give her Miss Merk's job."
Everybody laughed again, Mollie Merk, of course, loudest of all. The musician bade us good night, beginning to play again at the tables. I had forgotten about Kittie and Maudie, but now I knew they had been listening, too, for I heard Kittie speak.
"Why, that gipsy isn't a gipsy at all, is he?" she gasped.
"No more than I am," Mollie Merk told her. "Wears the rig because it pays—pleases romantic girls." She grinned at us, while Mrs. Hoppen leaned forward.
"I'm afraid you hurt his feelings," she told Maudie and me, "by refusing his invitation to dance a little while ago. That was the greatest compliment he could pay you, you know."
Mr. Morris looked amused. "Did he invite them to dance?" he inquired, with interest. "Good old Fritz. He doesn't often do that, this season."
Maudie and I exchanged a long glance. "I thought—" Maudie began, and then stopped. I was glad she said no more. I looked again at the gipsy, and, as if something had been stripped from my eyes, I saw him as he was—no reckless and desperate adventurer, but a matter-of-fact German, his silk shirt rather grimy, his black hair oily, his absurd red sash and shabby velvet coat rebukes to the imagination that had pictured a wild gipsy heart beating under them.
Mr. Morris was smiling at the girl in white. Now he turned to me and nodded toward her. "That's Miss Hastings and George Brook," he said. "Have you met them yet?" I was able to shake my head. "Well, it's high time you did," were his next words. "I'll bring them over."