"Why, what's wrong, Jinny, old girl." asked Crips innocently, assuming a
lounging attitude in the doorway. "You find the togs I'm wearin' a trifle
too negligee, so to speak. They're quite the thing in our set."

"Let me pass!" ejaculated the lady with crushing hauteur.

Nickie was not impressed. He smiled, and continued dreamily: "My word,
things have moved with you, Jinny. You're gone up like er rocket in er
reg'lar blaze iv glory, but I can still see yeh in the old shop days. You
blazed then too, old girl. It wasn't with di'monds, 'twas fish scales,
but you blazed. You could alwiz put on dog. You sold flathead, Jinny, but
I give the devil his due--you did it like a duchess."

At this point the Napoleonic footman intervened again. He took Nickie by
his rags and the nape of his neck, and running him tip-toe out of the
garden, tumbled him headlong on the grass-grown roadside. Nickie rejoined
Stub McGuire quite unconcerned.

"That's a new society game, my friend," he said. "The flunkey scored ten
points."

A few hours later the proprietor of the cement mansion came to his gate,
and beckoned Nicholas Crips off the heap. Nickie the Kid responded with
alacrity, and Stub McGuire gazed in cow-like wonder while the two
discussed matters in the gateway.

Nickie was calling him "Bill," "Billy," and "Willyum," indiscriminately.
Stub nearly fainted when he saw the gentleman draw a bank-note from his
pocket, and hand it to Nicholas Crips. Nickie lifted his deplorable hat,
and said: