y minute till the police broke up the game and took the
players to the Number 4 Station.

"What's that--did I take the kiddies? Not for a minute I didn't.
Would yer wanter take your little brothers or sisters----

"You ain't got none. Well, nobody's blamin' you, are they? I'm just
supposin' you had. Would you wanter take 'em any place you'd thought
there was goin' to be a scrap? Not much you wouldn't. I seen them
teams play once before when I was a kid.

"What! Well, I like that. Fourteen last birthday, and I'm taking
nothin' from any feller my age around these parts and don't you forget
it, or I might forget I promised me mother I'd try not to fight for one
day.

"Well, anyway I piked off alone to the flats to see the game, and, say,
there was about half a millyun people there.

"What's that! There ain't half a millyun in the whole city of Toronto?
You'd be a peach of a booster for this town, wouldn't you? Suppose
there ain't, it sounds good anyway. Besides, you know very well I'm
just trying to give you some idea about the size of the mob. And say,
maybe there wasn't some tough mugs there neither. Uh!

"Well, the referee he gives the teams a talking to about keeping the
nation-al game clean and free from disgrace. 'The first man,' he says,
'that forgets he's playing lacrosse and begins laying the hickory on
anybody,' he says, ''ll get a good long penalty.'

"Then Alderman McWhirter takes a whirl at 'em; him with the spongy
whiskers on each side of his face, and a jaw like the vestibul of a
street car.

"Vestibool, is it? Where did ye learn French? You muster lived in
Montreal.

"You never? Well, hold your hair on; hold your hair on. Kinder soured
on your food, ain't yer? What d'ye eat for breakfast anyway? Malted
soapsuds, chipped mule fritters, er any o' them fancy foods?

"Porridge! my, but you're away behind the times. Wake up, man, wake
up, the fast express is tearin' down the track and----

"All right. I'll proceed. So McWhirter gives the bunch a spiel a mile
long and would be going yet, but somebody calls out to him to dry up,
an' he gets red in the face and dries up, and the game starts.

"For about one minute they played like Sunday school was a joy to them,
and then the Easts bangs the ball into the net and the goal umpire he
ups with his hand, meanin' a goal and----

"What's that? You know that means a goal, eh! Feeling pretty pert
this morning, eh! Mebbe you'd like