little fellow between us bulging out on both sides of me, crushed
longitudinally from top to toe, so that he resembled a paper doll
before the crease is removed from its middle, three-quarters open.
"Great heavens!" I muttered. "What have I struck?"

[Illustration: "'L LUL LET ME OUT!' HE GASPED "]

"L-lul-let me out!" he gasped. "Don't you see you are squ-queezing
my figure out of shape? Get bub-back, blank it!"

"I can't," I panted. "I'm sorry, but--"

"Sorry be hanged!" he roared. "This is my place, you idiot--"

This was too much for me, and in my inability to kick him with my
foot I did it with my knee, and then, if I had not been excited, I
should have learned the unhappy truth. My knee went straight through
him and shoved the man ahead into the coat-tails of the bobbie in
front. It was fortunate for me that it happened as it did, for the
front-row man was wrathful enough to have struck me; but the police
took care of him; and as he was carried away on a stretcher, the
little jelly-fish came back into his normal proportions, like an
inflated India-rubber toy.

"What the deuce are you, anyhow?" I cried, aghast at the spectacle.

"You'll find out before you are a year older!" he wrathfully
answered. "I'll show you a shoving trick or two that you won't like,
you blooming Yank!"