aterial; between the fringed legs of this garment
and his broken canvas shoes the tops of socks, one white, the other
plaid, were plainly visible. The fact that they were only tops, and not
whole socks, was not to be missed, as they had worked up, and an inch of
bare ankle protruded. Nickie's coat was an old black Beaufort, from which
two buttons' hung on grey threads, which was split half-way up the back,
and from below the tails of which fluttered strips of torn lining. He
wore no vest, and had on a woman's faded pink print blouse as a shirt. He
had a linen collar that had long since lost all claims to whiteness and
all pretence of dignity, and his hat was a small round boxer, with
scarcely any rim. On one of the buttons of his Beaufort hung a strip of
ordinary sugar bag, on which he had written with a stub of pencil the
word "Program."

Mr. Nicholas Crips looked the part to the life. He had not shaved for a
week, and his lank hair was reaching out in all directions from under his
ridiculous hat, and from various strands dangled fragments of his last
couch under the boat shed. Nickie had nothing of the painted,
unconvincing theatrical accessories of the usual fancy dress tramp; he
looked real, and his success was instantaneous and complete.

I have endeavoured to show that Mr. Crips was not a diffident man; he did
not distress himself with scruples; fear of failure in an enterprise of
this kind never worried him. He walked across the grand ball-room,
swaggering in his rags, lifted his hat to a Watteau shepherdess who was
laughing at him from a settee in a recess, and said:

"Would yer darnce with er poor man, kind lydie?"

Again the crowd laughed. A tall Mary Queen of Scots peered at Nickie
through her lorgnette, and said.

"How very whimsical!" The little shepherdess was a merry spirit, and
bowed willingly. Nickie wrote "Milk Made" on his absurd programme, and
the quaintly assorted pair joined in the waltz. How, where and when
Nickie the Kid had learnt to dance Heaven knows, but he waltzed well, and
after that he danced with Mary Stuart in a set.

He was particularly attracted by Mary Stuart. She was a fine woman and
the rakish Nicholas had a discriminating eye where the sex was concerned.
Mary had a bold eye too, and a breezy manner. She took great joy in the
tramp.

A feature of Nickie's very humorous and original impersonation of the
Yarra-banker was his waggish begging. When he had danced, before leaving