panorama of the
street until the pace of time brought twelve o'clock and the dinner
hour. And Mr. "Tiger" McQuirk, with his athletic seventy inches,
well trained in sport and battle; his smooth, pale, solid, amiable
face--blue where the razor had travelled; his carefully considered
clothes and air of capability, was himself a spectacle not
displeasing to the eye.

But on this morning Mr. McQuirk did not hasten immediately to his
post of leisure and observation. Something unusual that he could
not quite grasp was in the air. Something disturbed his thoughts,
ruffled his senses, made him at once languid, irritable, elated,
dissastisfied and sportive. He was no diagnostician, and he did not
know that Lent was breaking up physiologically in his system.

Mrs. McQuirk had spoken of spring. Sceptically Tiger looked about him
for signs. Few they were. The organ-grinders were at work; but they
were always precocious harbingers. It was near enough spring for them
to go penny-hunting when the skating ball dropped at the park. In the
milliners' windows Easter hats, grave, gay and jubilant, blossomed.
There were green patches among the sidewalk debris of the grocers. On
a third-story window-sill the first elbow cushion of the season--old
gold stripes on a crimson ground--supported the kimonoed arms of a
pensive brunette. The wind blew cold from the East River, but the
sparrows were flying to the eaves with straws. A second-hand store,
combining foresight with faith, had set out an ice-chest and baseball
goods.

And then "Tiger's" eye, discrediting these signs, fell upon one that
bore a bud of promise. From a bright, new lithograph the head of
Capricornus confronted him, betokening the forward and heady brew.

Mr. McQuirk entered the saloon and called for his glass of bock. He
threw his nickel on the bar, raised the glass, set it down without
tasting it and strolled toward the door.

"Wot's the matter, Lord Bolinbroke?" inquired the sarcastic
bartender; "want a chiny vase or a gold-lined epergne to drink it out
of--hey?"

"Say," said Mr. McQuirk, wheeling and shooting out a horizontal hand
and a forty-five-degree chin, "you know your place only when it comes
for givin' titles. I've changed me mind about drinkin--see? You got
your money, ain't you? Wait till you get stung before you get the
droop to your lip, will you?"

Thus Mr. Quirk added mutability of desires to the strange humors that
had taken possession of him.

Le