this purse is. I'm going to spend all of that. Bee! I wish I had put him
to leash. He's going to hurt himself in a minute--you see!--"

"Don't you think he's much more likely to hurt somebody else? For a
guess, that queer-looking little citizen in spectacles over the way, who
so evidently doesn't know where he is at."

"Oh, do you think so?--Bee!... Then, after stationery, comes the
disagreeable thing, and yet interesting too. I have to go to my Aunt
Jennie's, dunning."

"You are compelled to dun your Aunt Jennie?"

She laughed. "No--dun for her, because she's too tender-hearted to do
it herself. There's a man there who won't pay his board. Bee!
Bee!--BEE!-O heavens--It's happened!"

And, too quick for West, she was gone into the mêlée, which immediately
closed in behind her, barricading him away.

What had happened was a small tragedy in its way. The little citizen in
spectacles, who had been standing on the opposite corner vacantly eating
an apple out of a paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to try the
crossing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes at
crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his mind. A
grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing things to the
speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing police patrol was close
behind, treading on its tail and indignantly clanging it to turn out,
which it could not possibly do. To avoid erasing the little citizen, the
patrol man had to pull sharply out; and this manoeuvre, as Fate had