Perhaps it was. "How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?"

"Fourteen days."

"So did you?" Shovel said, with quick anxiety.

"I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly.

Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.
Then, "I'm as game as you, and gamer," he whined.

"But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, I'll cry when I'm repenting."
Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious
look at it:

"You--you ain't like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied,
also in an awe-struck voice:

"I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm--I'm
sometimes near feared."

"What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the
blow-out?"

No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the
saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking
for each other.

The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of