gleans a little valuable information from a friendly barkeeper who's got
a brother-in-law at the Central Office, and so is in position to get
hold of much interesting and timely chit-chat before it becomes common
gossip throughout the neighborhood. So then I takes the Sweet Caps Kid
off to one side and I says to him, I says:

"'Kiddo,' I says, 'listen: I've got a strong presentiment that we should
oughter be going completely away from here. If we don't, the first thing
you know some plain-clothes bull with fallen arches and his neck shaved
'way up high in the back will be coming round asking us to go riding
with him down town into the congested district, and if we declines the
invitation, like as not he'll muss our clothes all up. Do you seem to
get my general drift?' I says.

"'Huh,' he says, 'you talk as if there'd been a squeal.'

"'Squeal?' I says. 'Squeal? Son, you can take it from me there's been a
regular season of grand opera. You and me are about to be accused of
pernicious activity. What's more, they're liable to prove it. There's a
movement on foot in influential quarters to provide us with board and
lodgings at a place which I will not name to you in so many words on
account of your weak heart. The work there,' I says, 'is regular, and
the meals is served on time, and you're protected from the damp night
air; but,' I says, 'the hours is too long and too confining to suit me.'
I've knowed probably a thousand fellers in my time that sojourned up at
Bird Center-on-the-Hudson anywhere from one to fifteen years on a
stretch, and I never seen one of them yet but had some fault to find
with the place.

"'Whereas, on the other hand,' I says, 'all nature seems to beckon to
us. Let's you and me steal forth under the billowy blue caliber of
Heaven and make hay while the haymakers are good. Let us quit the city
with its temptations and its snares and its pitfalls, 'specially the
last named,' I says, 'and in some peaceful spot far, far away, let us
teach Uncle Joshua Whitcomb that the hand is quicker than the eye, him
paying cash down in advance for the lessons. Tubby sure, the pickings
has been excellent here in the shadow of the skyscrapers, and it'll
probably be harder sledding out amongst the disk-harrow boys. Everybody
reads the papers these days, only the Rube believes what he reads and
the city guy don't. I hate to go, but I ain't comfortable where I am.
When my scalp begins to itch like it does now that's a si