“You stop teasing me…. Besides, probably you’re in love with twenty girls.”

“I am not. Why, I’ve never hardly known but just two girls in my life. One was just a girl I went to theaters with once or twice—she was the daughter of the landlady I used to have before I came here.”

“If you don’t make love to the landlady’s daughter
You won’t get a second piece of pie!”

quoted Nelly, out of the treasure-house of literature.

“Sure. That’s it. But I bet you—”

“Who was the other girl?”

“Oh! She…. She was a—an artist. I liked her—a lot. But she was—oh, awful highbrow. Gee! if—But—”

A sympathetic silence, which Nelly broke with:

“Yes, they’re funny people. Artists…. Do you have your lesson in Five Hundred tonight? Your very first one?”

“I think so. Say, is it much like this here bridge-whist? Oh say, Miss Nelly, why do they call it Five Hundred?”