Meanwhile Moxey, not yet twenty, was swimming in a sea of sentiment. There was a young Italian girl who worked in the paper-box factory.
"Angelica," said he, "come to the dance to-night."
"Nit," she responded.
"Why?"
"Oh, they'd give me the laugh, if I——" She paused tactfully.
"Account of——," he drew a semi-circle about his nose and laughed unhappily.
"We-ell." It was explicit enough.
"Can't see a guinea has anything on a Yiddisher." Tit for tat in love's badinage.
"I'm no guinea, I'm not," she exclaimed passionately. "I'm Amurrican."
"So'm I," he answered briskly. "I'm Amurrican—and I don't wear no hoops in my ears." Perhaps that would hold her for a while. It did. She retreated in tears, thinking of her sire's shame.