papers. "You should take shame to yourself that you ain't in uniform instid of baby clothes.

It was the part of discretion, so Mr. Leary inwardly decided, to ignore the fact that the interrogator himself appeared to be well within the military age.

"I'm a bit old to enlist," he stated, "and I'm past the draft age.'

"Then you're too old to be wearin' such riggin'. But, by cripes, I'll say this for youyou make a picture that'd make a horse laugh." Laughing like a horse, or as a horse would laugh if a horse ever laughed, he rocked to and fro on his heels.

"Sh-sh; not so loud, please," importuned Mr. Leary, casting an uneasy glance toward the lighted windows above. "Somebody might hear you!"

"I hope somebody does hear me," gurgled the temperamental Mr. Cassidy, now once more thoroughly beset by his mirth. "I need somebody to help me laugh. By cripes, I need a whole crowd to help me; and I know a way to get them!"

He twisted his head round so his voice would ascend the hallway. "Hey, fellers and skoirts," he called; "you that's fixin' to leave! Hurry on down here quick and see Algy, the livin' peppermint lossenger, before he melts away with his own sweetness.

Obeying the summons with promptness a flight of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddys,

accompanied for the most part by lady friends, cascaded down the stairs and erupted forth upon the sidewalk.

"Here y'are right here!" clarioned Mr. Cassidy as the first skylarkish pair showed in the doorway. His manner was drolly that of a showman exhibiting a rare freak, newly captured. "Come a-runnin'!"

They came a-running and there were a dozen of them or possible fifteen; blithesome spirits, all, and they fenced in the shrinking shape of Mr. Leary with a close and curious ring of themselves, and the combined volume of their glad, amazed outbursts might be heard for a distance of furlongs. On prankish impulse then they locked hands and with skippings and prancings and impromptu jig steps they circled about him; and he, had he sought to speak, could not well have been heard; and, anyway, he was for the moment past speech, because of being entirely engaged in giving vent to one vehement sneeze after another. And next, above the chorus of joyous whooping might be heard individual comments, each shrieked out shrilly and each punctuated by a sneeze from Mr. Leary's convulsed frame; or lacking that by a simulated sneeze from one of the revellers -one with a fine humorous flare for mimicry. And these comments were, for example, such as: "Git onto the socks!" "Ker-chew!"

"And the slippers!"

"Ker-chew!"

"And them lovely pink garters!"

"Ker-chew!"

"Oh, you cutey! Oh, you cut-up!" "Ker-chew!"

"Oh, you candy kid!”

"And say, git onto the cunnin' elbow sleeves our little playmate's sportin'.

"Yes, but goils, just pipe the poilies ain't they the greatest ever?”

“They sure are. Say, kiddo, gimme a button to remember you by, won't you? You'll never miss it-you got a-plenty more.'

"Wot d'ye call wot he's got on 'um, anyway?" The speaker was a male, naturally.

"W'y, you big stoopid, can't you see he's wearin' rompers?" The answer came in a giggle, from a gay youthful creature of the opposite sex as she kicked out roguishly.

"Well, then be chee, w'y don't he romp a little?"

"Give 'um time, cancher? Don't you see he's blowin' out his flues? He's busy now. He'll romp in a minute."

"Sure he will! We'll romp with 'um."

A waggish young person in white beaded slippers and a green sport skirt broke free from the cavorting ring, and behind Mr. Leary's back the nimble fingers of the madcap tapped his spinal ornamentations as an instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a familiar counting game of childhood:

"Rich man-poor man-beggar man-thief -doctor-loiryer

"Sure, he said he was a loiryer." It was Mr. Cassidy breaking in. "And he said his name was Algernon. Well, I believe the Algernon part-the big A. P. A."

"Oh, you Algy!"

"Algernon, does your mother know you're

out?"

"Tree cheers for Algy, the walkin' comic valentine!"

"Algy, Algy-Oh, you cutey Algy!" These jolly Greenwich Villagers were going to make a song of his name. They did make a song of it, and it was a frolicsome song and pitched to a rollicksome key. Congenial newcomers arrived, pelting down from upstairs whence they had been drawn by the happy rocketing clamor; and they caught spirit and step and tune with the rest and helped manfully to sing it. As one poet hath said, "And now reigned high carnival." And as another has so aptly phrased it, "There was sound of revelry by night." And, as the second poet once put it, or might have put it so if so be he didn't, “And all went merry as a marriage bell." But when we, adapting the line to our own descriptive usages, now say all went merry we should save out one exception-one whose form alternately was racked by hot flushes of a terrific self-consciousness and by humid gusts of an equally terrific sneezing fit.

VI

"Here, here, here! Cut out the yellin'! D'you want the whole block up out of their beds?" The voice of the personified law, gruff and authoritative, broke in upon the clamor, and the majesty of the law, typified in bulk, with galoshes, ear muffs and woollen gloves on, not to mention the customary uniform of blue and brass, ploughed a path toward the centre of the group.

66

"'S all right, Switzer," gaily replied a hoydenish lassie; she, the same who had begged Mr. Leary for a sea-pearl souvenir. "But just see wot Morrie Cassidy went and found here on the street!"

Patrolman Switzer looked then where she pointed, and could scarce believe his eyes. In his case gleefulness took on a rumbling thunderous form, which shook his being as with an ague and made him to beat himself violently upon his ribs.

"D'ye blame us for carryin' on, Switzer, when we seen it ourselves?"

"I don't-and that's a fact," Switzer confessed between gurgles. "I wouldn't a blamed you much if you'd fell down and had a fit." And then he rocked on his heels, filled with joviality clear down to his rubber soles. Anon, though, he remembered the responsibilities of his position. “Still, at that, and even so, said he, sobering himself, "enough of a good