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 spread the tiny cerise puff over her cheeks and touched her mouth uninterestedly with the lipstick. The powder failed her in her moment of need. Tears were apparently a poor powder base.

"Do I look all right?" she asked.

Had he risen to the occasion with a cheerful affirmative she might not have broken down again and cried, but he couldn't send her upstairs to that brother of hers with pitiful pink circles beneath her eyes.

"Oh, Eddie, Eddie, I can't bear it. He'll see it on me. He'll know what I've done and he'll kill me."

"The hell you say. Come on, Kid, this is the time I'm taking you all the way home."

"No." She shook her head miserably. "We went through all this once before, Eddie, and besides if you were there and he accused me of being no good, what answer have we got?"

Eddie kicked at the leg of one of the pensioner chairs.

"We could say we were going to be married," he replied.

"What good would that be? He'd find out we weren't going to be when we didn't do it."

Eddie shot a look at her under the brim of his hat. "I mean we would get married. Don't you want me, Dot? Wouldn't you marry me?"

"Oh, yes, Eddie, I'd love to. You'd never be sorry nor nothing. But I didn't think you meant that we'd really be married. I didn't think that you'd want me."

"I wanted you an hour ago, didn't I?"

She answered quickly. "That's something different. You've wanted other girls like that."

"Yeh, you're right, Kid. I got no argument and I can't explain. I'm too dumb. But this is different."

"But it's all right to tell them I'm going to be married?"