etermined mouth had become a perfectly straight line of scarlet. It was
going to be difficult to be chatty to this girl. She was going to be a
hard audience. Would mere words be able to touch her heart? The thought
suggested itself that, properly speaking, one would need to use a
pick-axe.

"If you could spare me a couples of minutes of your valuable time--"

"Say!" The lady drew herself up menacingly. "You tie a can to yourself
and disappear! Fade away, or I'll call a cop!"

Archie was horrified at this misinterpretation of his motives. One or
two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to
keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless
existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the
past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary. The loafer
nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same wall. The
children, abandoning the meat-tin round which their game had centred,
drew closer.

"My dear old soul!" said Archie. "You don't understand!"

"Don't I! I know your sort, you trailing arbutus!"

"No, no! My dear old thing, believe me! I wouldn't dream!"

"Are you going or aren't you?"

Eleven more children joined the ring of spectators. The loafers stared
silently, like awakened crocodiles.

"But, I say, listen! I only wanted--"

At this point another voice spoke.

"Say!"

The word "Say!" more almost than any word in the American language, is
capable of a variety of shades of expression. It can be genial, it can
be jovial, it can be appealing. It can also be truculent The "Say!"
which at this juncture smote upon Archie's ear-drum with a suddenness
which made him leap in the air was truculent; and the two loafers and
twenty-seven children who now formed the audience were well satisfied
with the dramatic development of the performance. To their experienced
ears the word had the right ring.

Archie spun round. At his elbow stood a long, strongly-built young man
in a grey suit.

"Well!" said the young man, nastily. And he extended a large, freckled
face toward Archie's. It seemed to the latter, as he backed against the
wall, that the young man's neck must be composed of india-rubber. It
appeared to be growing longer every moment. His face, besides being
freckled, was a dull brick-red in colour; his lips curled back in an
unpleasant snarl, showing a gold tooth; and beside him, swaying in an
ominous sort of way, hung two cl