blousy outbulging bifurcations just above the naked knees.
Light stealing into this obscured and sheltered spot would have revealed
that this garment was, as to texture, a heavy, silklike, sheeny,
material; and as to colour a vivid and compelling pink--the exact colour
of a slice of well-ripened watermelon; also that its sleeves ended
elbow-high in an effect of broad turned-back cuffs; finally, that adown
its owner's back it was snugly and adequately secured by means of a
close-set succession of very large, very shiny white pearl buttons; the
whole constituting an enlarged but exceedingly accurate copy of what,
descriptively, is known to the manufactured-garment trade as a one-piece
suit of child's rompers, self-trimmed, fastening behind; suitable for
nursery, playground and seashore, especially recommended as summer wear
for the little ones; to be had in all sizes; prices such-and-such.

Within a space of some six or seven minutes this precisely was what the
nearest street lamp did reveal unto itself as its downward-slanting
beams fell upon a furtive, fugitive shape, suggestive in that deficient
subradiance of a vastly overgrown forked parsnip, miraculously endowed
with powers of locomotion and bound for somewhere in a hurry; excepting
of course no forked parsnip, however remarkable in other respects, would
be wearing a floppy straw hat in a snowstorm; nor is it likely it would
be adorned lengthwise in its rear with a highly decorative design of
broad, smooth, polished disks which, even in that poor illumination,
gleamed and twinkled and wiggled snakily in and out of alignment, in
accord with the movements of their wearer's spinal column.

But the reader and I, better informed than any lamp post could be as to
the prior sequence of events, would know at a glance it was no parsnip
we beheld, but Mr. Algernon Leary, now suddenly enveloped, through no
fault of his own, in one of the most overpowering predicaments
conceivable to involve a rising lawyer and a member of at least two good
clubs; and had we but been there to watch him, knowing, as we would
know, the developments leading up to this present situation, we might
have guessed what was the truth: That Mr. Leary was hot bent upon
retreating to the only imaginable refuge left to him at this
juncture--to wit, the interior of the stranded taxicab which he had
abandoned but a short time previously.

IV

Nearly all of us at some time or other in our lives have dream