"A young man of your age ought to be home and in bed long before this," she said as they turned the corner of Sixth Avenue precisely at half-past eleven.
"I got my duties to perform the same as anybody else, Mrs. Fieldstone; and what Mr. Bienenflug tells me to do I must do," he retorted. "Also, you should remember what I told you about not eating nothing on me except oysters and a glass of beer, maybe, as I forgot to bring much money with me from the office."
"I didn't come down here to eat," Mrs. Fieldstone said, with a catch in her voice.
"Even so, Mrs. Fieldstone, don't you try to start nothing with this woman, as you never know what you're stacking up against in cafés," Ralph warned her. "Young Hartigan, the featherweight champion of the world, used to be a—now—coat boy in Sam's; and they got several waiters working there who has also graduated from the preliminary class."
"I wouldn't open my head at all," Mrs. Fieldstone promised; and with this assurance they entered the most southerly of the three doors to Sam's.
One of the penalties of being one of the few restaurants in New York permitted to do business between one a.m. and six a.m. was that Sam's Café and Restaurant did a light business between six p.m. and one a.m.; and consequently at eleven-thirty p.m. J. Montgomery Fieldstone and Miss Goldie Raymond were the only occupants of the south dining-room.
It is true that there were other customers seated in the middle and north dining-rooms—conspicuously Mr. Sidney Rossmore and Miss Vivian Haig; and it was this young lady who, though hidden from J. Montgomery Fieldstone's view, formed one of the subsidiary heads of his discourse with Miss Raymond.
"Well, I wish you could 'a' seen her, kid!" he said to Miss Raymond. "My little girl seven years old has took of Professor Rheinberger plain and fancy dancing for three weeks only, and she's a regular Pavlowa already alongside of Haig. She's heavy on her feet like an elephant!"
"You should tell me that!" Miss Raymond exclaimed. "Ain't I seen her?"
"And yet you claim I considered giving her this part in the new piece," Fieldstone said indignantly. "I'm honestly surprised at you, kid!"