rs he paid me for it. I vish sometimes you look around for more
chairs like dot."

Felix nodded in assent, reading the Dutchman's obstinate mind in the
shopkeeper's sudden return to business questions. If Masie's future was
to be helped, another hand than his own must be stretched out. He turned
on his heel, and was about to regain his chair, when Otto, craning his
head, called out:

"Dot's Father Cruse comin' in. You ask him now vonce about dis goin'
avay bizness. He tell you same as me."

The priest was now abreast of Felix, who had stepped forward to greet
him, Otto watching their movements. The two stood talking in a
low voice, Felix's eyes downcast as if in deep thought, the priest
apparently urging some plan, which O'Day, by his manner, seemed to
favor. They were too far off, and spoke too low, for Otto to catch the
drift of the talk, and it was only when Felix, who had followed the
priest outside the door, had returned that he called, from his high seat
under the gas-jet: "Vell, vat did Father Cruse say?"

Felix drew his brows together. "Say about what?" he asked, as if the
question had surprised him.

"About Beesving. Didn't you ask him?"

"No, we talked of other things," replied Felix and, turning on his heel,
occupied himself about the shop.

Across the street meanwhile Kitty's own plans had also gone astray this
winter's morning--so many of them, in fact, that she was at her wits'
end which way to turn. A trunk had been left at the wrong address, and
John had been two hours looking for it. Bobby had come home from school
with a lump on his head as big as a hen's egg, where some "gas-house
kid," as Bobby expressed it, "had fetched him a crack." Mike, on his way
down from the Grand Central, knowing that John was away with the other
horse and Kitty worrying, had urged big Jim to gallop, and, in his
haste, had bowled over a ten-year-old boy astride of a bicycle, and,
worse yet, the entire outfit--big Jim, wagon, Mike, boy, bicycle, and
the boy's father--were at that precise moment lined up in front of the
captain's desk at the 35th Street police station.

The arrest did not trouble Kitty. She knew the captain and the captain
knew her. If bail were needed, there were half a dozen men within fifty
yards of where she stood who would gladly furnish it. Mike was careless,
anyhow, and a little overhauling would do him good.

What did trouble her was the tying up of big Jim and her wagon at a
time when she ne