"Just my luck," said James. He looked at the girl, and thought her pretty and pathetic, with a vulgar, almost tragic, prettiness and pathos. She was anæmic and painfully thin. Her blouse was puffed out over her flat chest. She looked worn out with the miserable little tediums of life, with constant stepping over ant-hills of stupidity and petty hopelessness. Her work was not, comparatively speaking, arduous, but the serving of hot coffee and frankfurters to workingmen was not progressive, and she looked as if her principal diet was the left-overs of the stock in trade. She seemed to exhale an odor of musty sandwiches and sausages and muddy coffee.
The man swallowed his second cup in fierce gulps. He glanced at his Ingersoll watch. "Gee whiz!" said he. "It's time I was off! Good-by, Mame."
The girl turned her head with a toss, and did not reply. "Good-by," James said.
The man grinned. "Good-by, Doc," he [pg 014] said. "I'll call you when I git the measles. You're a good feller. If you'd been a benefactor I'd run you out."
The man clattered down the steps of the gaudily painted little structure. The girl whom he had called Mame turned and looked at James with a sort of innocent boldness. "He's a queer feller," she observed.
"He seems to be."
"He is, you bet. Livin' in a house he's built out of boxes when he makes big money. He's on strike every little while. I wouldn't look at him. Don't know what he's drivin' at half the time. Reckon he's—" She touched her head significantly.
"Lots of folks are," said James affably.
"That's so." She stared reflectively at James. "I'm keepin' this quick lunch 'cause my father's sick," said she. "I see a lot of human nature in here."
"I suppose you do."