igns and after four, seems to be your big outdoor sport.
Forfeit your bail, old boy--or it's thirty days for you, sure."

Casey Ryan made bitter retort, but the traffic cop had gone to untangle
two furious Fords from a horse-drawn mail wagon, so he did not hear.
Which was good luck for Casey.

"Why do you persist in making trouble for yourself?" the Little Woman
beside him exclaimed. "It can't be so hard to obey the rules; other
drivers do. I know that I have driven this car all over town without
any trouble whatever."

Casey hogged the next safety-zone line to the deep disgust of a young
movie star in a cream-and-silver racer, and pulled in to the curb just
where he could not be passed.

"All right, ma'am. You can drive, then." He slid out of the driver's
seat to the pavement, his face a deeper shade of red than usual.

"For pity's sake, Casey! Don't be silly," his wife cried sharply, a
bit of panic in her voice.

"You was in a hurry to git home," Casey pointed out to her with that
mildness of manner which is not mild. "I was hurryin', wasn't I?"

"You aren't hurrying now--you're delaying the traffic again. Do be
reasonable! You know it costs money to argue with the police."

"Police be damned! I'm tryin' to please a woman, an' I'm up agin a
hard proposition. You can ask anybody if I'm the unreasonable one. You
hustled me out of the show soon as the huggin' commenced. You wouldn't
even let me stay to see the first of Mutt and Jeff. You said you was
in a hurry. I leaves the show without seein' the best part, gits the
car an' drills through the traffic tryin' to git yuh home quick. Now
you're kickin' because I did hurry."

"Hey! Whadda yuh mean, blockin' the traffic?" a domineering voice
behind him bellowed. "This ain't any reception hall, and it ain't no
free auto park neither."

Another traffic officer with another pencil and another pad of tickets
such as drivers dread to see began to write down the number of Casey's
car. This man did not argue. He finished his work briskly, presented
another notice which advised Casey Ryan to report immediately to police
headquarters, waved Casey peremptorily to proceed, and returned to his
little square platform to the chorus of blatting automobile horns.

"The cops in this town hands out tickets like they was Free Excursion
peddlers!" snorted Casey, his eyes a pale glitter behind his
half-closed lids. "They can go around me, or they can honk and be
da