horses, took off my livery, made her a bow, and handed it over to her with the reins, right there in the main street. By jingo, it was worth it to see her face!”

“What’s the queerest job you ever landed?” said Flick, savoring the steak with gratitude.

“Queerest?” said O’Leary, scratching his head and seeming to return over a long and grotesque line. “I’ve done some funny things in my time.”

“Tell you what I did over in Chattanooga—in red-hot midsummer, too,” said Flick, in a burst of confidence. “I was a dog-catcher.”

“That certainly is going down for it,” said O’Leary, grinning. “But I’ve got you beat. I subbed in a face-parlor.”

“A what?”

“Painted out black eyes and that sort of thing. Fact—out in Chicago.”

“My word!” said Tootles, overjoyed to see a beam of good humor breaking through the clouds. “I wonder that I associate with such persons.”

“Leaving out the dog-catcher,” said O’Leary, falling with gusto to the attack of his heaped-up plate, “I do believe, with the exception of preaching and tooth-extracting, I’ve tried them all. I’ve run a country paper. There’s a story there I’ll give you some day. Lord! I even taught school in the Philippines to the pesky heathen. Have mined for gold, silver, copper, diamonds, and zinc, from Cripple Creek to Kimberley. I’ve traded and sold everything from a thousand cattle to peddling collar-buttons at the Queen’s Jubilee. I’ve been a bartender in Paree, and into a peck of trouble, too. I’ve run a steam laundry in Porto Ricky and had the whole danged business washed away in a hurricane. I’ve dipped into a few spring revolutions in South Americky, and I rode out with Jameson in the raid that kicked out the whole African mess. Got in and out of Kimberley, and joined the Rough Riders with Teddy—here’s to him! Never was much of a sailor, but I’ve seen my time before the mast through the Southern seas (that’s how I appreciated your nautical terms, boy) when I stowed away for Chiny and Calcutta. Lord, where haven’t I been?”

“O’Leary, you’re either a hell of a big liar or a regular fellow,” said Flick, cheerfully, “and either way, I’m for you.”

“Maybe I’m blowing too much,” said O’Leary quietly. “But it’s sort o’ whistling in the wind to keep your courage up. However, I’ve laid my cards on the table. That’s me. Well, this is starting good enough to keep it going. What do you say to taking in a show? There’s something in the line of vaudeville over at the Colonial?”

“Is there so much money in the world?” said Tootles doubtfully.

“Boy, a taxi!” said King O’Leary, pounding on the table gorgeously.

“I’m beginning to feel like the Fourth of July,” said Flick, who gave in completely with this last display of magnificence.

“That’s what we’ll make it,” said King O’Leary. “Schnapps, steal the change. Come on.”

The visit to the theater was the undoing of all the good work accomplished, nor could the result have been foreseen. The orchestra was comfortably filled with an indiscriminate scattering of transients, plainly marooned, and the three friends, being resolved to laughter, applauded the opening numbers with such zest that they woke up the torpid house and had the entertainers gratefully aiming their shafts in the direction of their box for the pure joy of rousing King O’Leary’s soul-filling, rumbling laughter, to hear which was infection itself. The outer world, the season, and the calendar had been shut away as they roared over the grotesque tumbles and trippings of a comic acrobat who gyrated fearfully on a bicycle the size of a house, when the curtain went down and up again on the Lovibond Sisters. “Sweet Singers from the South,” who, according to the program, “would introduce sentimental favorites.”

All their mirth vanished. They waited glumly through “Annie Laurie,” and fidgeted as the quartet quavered into “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,” but when “My Old Kentucky Home” began, with moonlight effects on the back drop and cowbells tinkling, O’Leary got up suddenly and said:

“Hell! Let’s beat it.”

They emerged glumly on the sidewalk, while Flick swore copiously for the crowd and led the way down the avenue to Campeau’s, where they found a table in a noisy gathering thundered over by a dynamic orchestra.

“O’Leary, it’s no use,” said Flick; “we can’t get away from it.”

“Guess you’re right.”

They stayed there a long while, passing into the confidential stage, while Tootles consumed large quantities of ginger ale and sought desperately to stem the rising tide, which came rolling in blackly. They had yielded to their depression, reveling in it. While King O’Leary listened, jerking at his fingers, Flick reminisced of forgotten days in a little Western town, of white Christmases when the relations gathered in jingling sleighs and the table was crowned with a wild turkey at one end and a crackling pig at the other.

“With a roast apple in his snout, and a ribbon—a blue—no, a pink ribbon decorating his ornery little tail. King, I can taste that pig yet—fact—good pig—good old pig! What did we use to call him? Can’t remember.” He went off into a foggy search, dipping his finger in a puddle of water on the table and seeking to reconstruct it in the shape of his remembered idol. “Looked like that—just so. There’s the tail—see? We used to fight to get that tail, Lem, Minnie, and me—” He suddenly looked up, as though conscious of O’Leary’s staring silence. “I say, did you used to have pig—roast pig? No? Well, what sort of Christmas did you have?”

“There was only one that counted,” said King O’Leary, frowning stubbornly, “and that, son, we won’t talk about.”

“Why not?” said Flick indignantly. He added, as though in his clouded brain he had found the answer, “Secret sorrow—that it?”

“Call it that.”

The news seemed further to depress Flick. He contemplated the shining plate with deep commiseration, shaking his head.

“All right. Sorry—mighty sorry. Felt that right off about you. Fact! Shake—shake hands.”

Tootles watched Flick, a little maudlin, silently offer his hand to King O’Leary, who took it glumly and abruptly arose as though shaking off a leaden weight, saying:

“Well, I’ve had enough of this place. Beat it again.”

They began to wander, east and west, up-town and down-town, seeking memory’s oblivion, finding it always dogging their heels—a rapid, confused passage through lighted restaurants and noisy cafés, with momentary junctions in casual parties. They ended up in an all-night restaurant, where King O’Leary took possession of the piano, Tootles conducting the orchestra, while Flick, with pompous dignity, singled out the fattest and oldest ladies and made them a bow, saying with terrific dignity:

“Madam, will you accord me the honor of this dance? No? I am sorry—very sorry, but thank you, thank you perfectly jus’ same.”

Tootles, finally, in the wee hours, coaxed them back to the Arcade (after many a slip), and woke up Sassafras, whose fee for such gala performances was half a dollar. But on the threshold of the elevator King O’Leary suddenly remembered the alarming ascent of the afternoon and hastily imparted the information to Flick, saying:

“Wouldn’t have it harm a hair of your head, not a hair. Understand? Like you, boy. No harm!”

“Must be careful, very careful,” said Flick solemnly. “Won’t stand great strain, see? That’s the idea.”

“I see,” said King O’Leary, “but how?”