n attribute which
he later turned into a doubtful asset in Nice. On the rare occasions
when Giddy graced Winnebago with his presence you were likely to find
him pursuing the pleasures that occupied other Winnebago boys of his
age, if not station. In some miraculous way he had escaped being a snob.
Still, training and travel combined to lead him into many innocent
errors. When he dropped into Fetzer's pool shack carrying a malacca
cane, for example. He had carried a cane every day for six months in
Paris, whence he had just returned. Now it was as much a part of his
street attire as his hat--more, to be exact, for the hatless head had
just then become the street mode. There was a good game of Kelly in
progress. Giddy, leaning slightly on his stick, stood watching it.
Suddenly he was aware that all about the dim smoky little room players
and loungers were standing in attitudes of exaggerated elegance. Each
was leaning on a cue, his elbow crooked in as near an imitation of
Giddy's position as the stick's length would permit. The figure was
curved so that it stuck out behind and before; the expression on each
face was as asinine as its owner's knowledge of the comic-weekly swell
could make it; the little finger of the free hand was extravagantly
bent. The players themselves walked with a mincing step about the table.
And: "My deah fellah, what a pretty play. Mean to say, neat, don't you
know," came incongruously from the lips of Reddy Lennigan, whose father
ran the Lennigan House on Outagamie Street. He spatted his large hands
delicately together in further expression of approval.

"Think so?" giggled his opponent, Mr. Dutchy Meisenberg. "_Aw_--fly
sweet of you to say so, old thing." He tucked his unspeakable
handkerchief up his cuff and coughed behind his palm. He turned to
Giddy. "Excuse my not having my coat on, deah boy."

Just here Giddy might have done a number of things, all wrong. The game
was ended. He walked to the table, and, using the offending stick as a
cue, made a rather pretty shot that he had learned from Benoit in
London. Then he ranged the cane neatly on the rack with the cues. He
even grinned a little boyishly. "You win," he said. "My treat. What'll
you have?"

Which was pretty sporting for a boy whose American training had been
what Giddy's had been.

Giddy's father, on the death of old Gideon, proved himself much more
expert at dispensing the paper mill money than at accumulating it. After
old Mad