through a long slit in each leg of the stained trousers. The frock coat
went badly with the damaged tan boots and the moth-eaten rag cap Nicholas
was wearing.

Mr. Crips was making back-door call, and telling housewives what the
doctors at the hospital had said about his peculiar ailment which, it
appears, was an interesting heart weakness.

"Above all, I must be careful never to over-exert myself, madam--those
are the doctor's orders," said Nickie, in his sad, calm way. "The
smallest excitement, the slightest strain, and my life goes out like
that." Nickie puffed an imaginary candle with dramatic significance.

This was the preliminary to a mild appeal for creature and medical
comforts, and it had two objects--to open the soul to compassion, and bar
all considerations of manual labour.

Our hero's manner with women was a gentle manly deference; his begging
showed no trace of servility, but he was always polite. He accepted
failure with good grace, and did not resent scorn, abuse, or even
violence from intended victims. He was rarely combative. Fighting was not
his special gift; he met misfortune with patient passivity Resistance he
found a mistake. But for all this a certain sense of superiority was,
never wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat,
fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all
failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish
self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients;
but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully
whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a
blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the abounding weaknesses
and simplicity of the people he imposed upon, but, on the other hand, it
would be sufficient to show that Mr. Crips was inspired only with gross
selfishness or to comprehend that the stability of society depends upon
fair dealing and faithful labour.

Nevertheless there were occasions when Nickie the Kid deliberately
undertook to earn his daily bread. For a week he served as waiter in a
six penny restaurant. He had been a "super" in drama and a practical
crocodile in pantomime and was long in the employ of a fashionable
undertaker as second in command on the hearse. In this latter billet he
had to keep his hair dyed a presentable black, but otherwise the duties
were light, and Nickie might still have been useful mute, only