"Poor Burgess! That was your amusement, wasn't it?--to see me go
out discreetly perfumed, in fine linen and purple, brave as the
best of them in club and hall, in ballroom and supper room, and in
every lesser hell from Crystal Palace cinders to Canal.

"Poor Burgess! Even the seventy-five pretty waitresses at the
Gaities would turn up their seventy-five retrousse noses at a man
with pockets as empty as mine."

"Your clothes are fashionable. So is your figger, sir."

"That settles it?" protested the young fellow, weak with laughter.
"Burgess, _don't_ go! Don't _ever_ go! I do need you. Oh I _do_
want you, Burgess. Because there never will be anybody exactly
like you, and I've only one life in which to observe you, study
you, and mentally digest you. You _won't_ go, will you?"

"No sir," said Burgess with dignity.




CHAPTER VI

There was incipient demoralisation already in the offices of Craig
& Son. Young gentlemen perched on high benches still searched city
maps and explored high-way and by-way with compass and
pencil-point, but their ears were alert to every shout from the
streets, and their interest remained centred in the newspaper