tering and
sobbing. "Fight you? Nev'--s' help me--nev'--Fight poor, ole fool
Recky--bes' fren' ev' had? No sir. I wouldn' fight you Recky," and he
raised a tear-stained face and gazed mournfully into his eyes. "D'ye
think I'd----"

"Oh, shut up!" Rex ejaculated, "and hold your head up, Billy. You make
me sick."

The intoxicated heavy freight being under way again, Rex looked about
for the rest of the train, but in vain. After a halt of a minute or so
he decided that they were lost and would have to stay lost, the
situation being too precarious, in this land of policemen, with one
hundred and ninety pounds of noisy uncertainty on his hands, to risk any
unnecessary movement. Billy kept every breath of time alive and varied.
Within two minutes of the first adventure he managed to put his elbow
clearly and forcibly into a small man's mouth, and before the other
could resent it:

"'S my elbow, sir," he said, haughtily, stopping and staring down.

"Well, why in thunder don't you keep it where it belongs?" snapped the
man, and Billy caught him by the sleeve.

"Lil' sir," he said impressively, "if you should bite off my elbow, you
saucy baggage"--and the thought was too much for him. Tears filling his
eyes he turned to Rex. "Recky, you spank that lil' sir," he pleaded
brokenly. "He's too lil' for me--I'd hurt him"--and Rex meditated
again. A shock came when they reached the corner of Broadway and
Chambers Street. "Up's' daisy," crowed Billy Strong, and swung Fairfax
facing uptown with a mighty heave.

"The Elevated station's down a block, old chap," explained the sober
contingent. "We have to take the Elevated to Seventy-second you know,
and walk across to your place."

Billy looked at him pityingly. "You poor lil' pup," he crooned. "Didn' I
keep tellin' you had to go Chris'pher Street ferry meet a girl? Goin'
theater with girl." He tipped his derby one-sided and started off on a
cakewalk.

Rex had to march beside him willy-nilly. "Look here, Billy," he
reasoned, exasperated at this entirely fresh twist in the corkscrew
business of getting Strong home. "Look here, Billy, this is tommy-rot.
You haven't any date with a girl, and if you had you couldn't keep it.
Come along home, man; that's the place for you."

But Billy was suddenly a Gibraltar of firmness. "Got date with lovely
blue-eyed girlie--couldn't dish'point her. Unmanly deed--Recky, d' _you_
want bes' fren' ev' had to do unmanly deed, and dish'point trustin'