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Once in a while," said the girl, "but not so often now." And she dropped her eyes

to the ground in what, in another than Little Eva, might have been construed as

embarrassment. "Where you going now?" she asked quickly.

To eat," said Jimmy, and then prompted by the instincts of his earlier training

and without appreciable pause: "Won't you take dinner with me?" "No," said the

girl, "but you are going to take dinner with me. You're out of a job and broke, and

the chances are you've just this minute hocked your watch, while I have plenty of

money. No," she said as Jimmy started to protest, "this is going to be on me. I

never knew how much I enjoyed talking with you at breakfast until after you had

left Feinheimer's. I've been real lonesome ever since," she admitted frankly. "You

talk to me different from what the other men do." She pressed his arm gently.

"You talk to me, kid, just like a fellow might talk to his sister."

Jimmy didn't know just what rejoinder to make, and so he made none. As a

matter of fact, he had not realized that he had said or done anything to win her

confidence, nor could he explain his attitude toward her in the light of what he

knew of her life and vocation. There is a type of man that respects and reveres

woman-hood for those inherent virtues which are supposed to be the natural

attributes of the sex because in their childhood they have seen them exemplified

in their mothers, their sisters and in the majority of women and girls who were

parts of the natural environment of their early lives.

It is difficult ever entirely to shatter the faith of such men, and however they may

be wronged by individuals of the opposite sex their subjective attitude toward

woman in the abstract is one of chivalrous respect. As far as outward

appearances were concerned Little Eva might have passed readily as a paragon of

all the virtues. As yet, there was no sign nor line of dissipation marked upon her

piquant face, nor in her consociation with Jimmy was there ever the slightest

reference to or reminder of her vocation.

101

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