Peter gulped. “I dropped my keys,” he cried eagerly. “I was swinging them. I had to go back and pick them up.” And triumphantly, with his free hand, he produced them from his pocket.
Within the grip of his other hand he felt her soft arm tremble a little. Her gaze drooped.
“It isn't just to-night—” he heard her trying to say.
“Come, dear, here's a bus! We'll ride up-town.”
She let him lead her to the curb. Solicitously he handed her up the winding little stairway to a seat on the roof.
There is no one book of Peter's life. There are a great many little books, some of them apparently unconnected with any of the others. Maria Tonifetti, as you may gather from this unintelligible little scene on a street corner, had one of those detached Peter books all to herself.
Up on the roof of the bus, Peter, reacting with great inner excitement from his experiences of the last three hours, slipped an arm about Maria's shoulders, bent tenderly over her, whispered softly into her ear. Before the bus reached Forty-second Street he had the satisfaction of feeling her nestle softly and comfortably against his arm, and he knew that once again he had won her. Slowly within his battered spirit the old thrill of conquest stirred and flamed up into a warm glow....