ghnecks belongs on de Bowery, so dat's wot we'll call my dump
down by de river. You're a highbrow, so youse gotta live on Riverside
Drive, see?" and the mucker laughed at his little pleasantry.

But the girl did not laugh with him. Instead she looked troubled.

"Wouldn't you rather be a 'highbrow' too?" she asked, "and live up on
Riverside Drive, right across the street from me?"

"I don't belong," said the mucker gruffly.

"Wouldn't you rather belong?" insisted the girl.

All his life Billy had looked with contempt upon the hated,
pusillanimous highbrows, and now to be asked if he would not rather be
one! It was unthinkable, and yet, strange to relate, he realized an odd
longing to be like Theriere, and Billy Mallory; yes, in some respects
like Divine, even. He wanted to be more like the men that the woman he
loved knew best.

"It's too late fer me ever to belong, now," he said ruefully. "Yeh gotta
be borned to it. Gee! Wouldn't I look funny in wite pants, an' one o'
dem dinky, little 'Willie-off-de-yacht' lids?"

Even Barbara had to laugh at the picture the man's words raised to her
imagination.

"I didn't mean that," she hastened to explain. "I didn't mean that you
must necessarily dress like them; but BE like them--act like them--talk
like them, as Mr. Theriere did, you know. He was a gentleman."

"An' I'm not," said Billy.

"Oh, I didn't mean THAT," the girl hastened to explain.

"Well, whether youse meant it or not, it's so," said the mucker. "I
ain't no gent--I'm a mucker. I have your word for it, you know--yeh
said so that time on de Halfmoon, an' I ain't fergot it; but youse was
right--I am a mucker. I ain't never learned how to be anything else. I
ain't never wanted to be anything else until today. Now, I'd like to be
a gent; but it's too late."

"Won't you try?" asked the girl. "For my sake?"

"Go to't," returned the mucker cheerfully; "I'd even wear side whiskers
fer youse."

"Horrors!" exclaimed Barbara Harding. "I couldn't look at you if you
did."

"Well, then, tell me wot youse do want me to do."

Barbara discovered that her task was to be a difficult one if she were
to accomplish it without wounding the man's feelings; but she determined
to strike while the iron was hot and risk offending him--why she should
be interested in the regeneration of Mr. Billy Byrne it never once
occurred to her to ask herself. She hesitated a moment before speaking.

"One of the first things you must do,