ted,
and all at once he saw how my vest bulged out, and he knew by the
rough edges of the bulge it wasn't samwiches because them dookal
samwiches is all boneless. So he puts his hand on my shoulder and he
says, 'Mike, ain't you carryin' the joke a bit too far?' That's what
he says, and I wish you could have heard how sad his voice was. He
says, 'You know me, Mike, and you know that anything I've got is
yours--_except_ that crown you've got inside your vest.'

"For a minute I didn't know what to do. I wasn't in tramp disguise and
I thought he would think I was a thief in real life, so I says, 'Dook,
search me!' 'I don't have to search you,' he says, 'for I can see my
favorite crown bulging out your vest.' 'I don't mean that, Dook, old
chap,' I says; 'I mean take me up to your bood-u-war or the bathroom
and give me the twice-over. Something's wrong with me, and I don't
know what, but some of my tramp disguise must be sticking to me
somewhere.' So we went up to the bathroom and he went over me with
this one-eyed monocule he always wore, and then he went over me with a
reading-glass, and then he went over me with a microscope, but he
couldn't see a speck of tramp disguise on me. Not a speck. 'Keep
lookin'!' I says. 'It must be there somewhere, Dook,' I says, 'or I
wouldn't act so pernicious.' So he begun again, and all at once I hear
him chuckle. He was lookin' in my ear with the microscope."

"What was it?" asked Philo Gubb eagerly.

"A hair," said Chi Foxy. "Just one hair. It was a hair out of my tramp
whiskers that had got in my ear, and the minute he pulled it out I was
all right again and no more tramp than he was. So you see that's the
way I keep acting tramp as long as I have even one hair of tramp
disguise about me. Come on, be a good feller and let me have half a
dollar to get some feeds with."

P. Gubb put his hand in his pocket and withdrew it again. "I much
admire to like the way you act right up to the disguise," he said,
"and it does you proud, but of course when you ask for fifty cents
it's nothing but part of the disguise, ain't it?"

"Now, see here, bo!" said Chi Foxy earnestly. "Don't you go and
misunderstand me. I didn't mean to be mistook that way. I _do_ want
fifty cents. I'm hungry, I am."

P. Gubb smiled approvingly. "Most excellent trampish disguise work,"
he said. "Nobody couldn't do it better. A real tramp couldn't do it
better."

Chi Foxy frowned. "Say," he said, "cut that out, won't you,