ng of her
hat, and one in the large and dilapidated chatelaine bag which dangled
at her knees.

Nathan Spiderwitz, who had preserved absolute silence, now contributed
his fare, moist and warm, from his mouth, and Eva turned to him
admonishingly.

"Ain't Teacher told you money in the mouth ain't healthy fer you?" she
sternly questioned, and Nathan, when he had removed other pennies, was
able to answer:

"I washed 'em off--first." And they were indeed most brightly clean.
"There's holes in me these here pockets," he explained, and promptly
corked himself anew with currency.

"But they don't tastes nice, do they?" Morris remonstrated. Nathan shook
a corroborative head. "Und," the Monitor of the Gold Fish further urged,
"you could to swallow 'em und then you couldn't never to come by your
house no more."

But Nathan was not to be dissuaded, even when the impressionable and
experimental Becky tried his storage system and suffered keen discomfort
before her penny was restored to her by a resourceful fellow traveler
who thumped her right lustily on the back until her crowings ceased and
the coin was once more in her hand.

At the meeting of Grand Street with the Bowery, wild confusion was made
wilder by the addition of seven small persons armed with transfers and
clamoring--all except Nathan--for Central Park. Two newsboys and a
policeman bestowed them upon a Third Avenue car and all went well until
Patrick missed his lunch and charged Ignatius Aloysius with its
abstraction. Words ensued which were not easily to be forgotten even
when the refreshment was found--flat and horribly distorted--under the
portly frame of the chaperon.

Jealousy may have played some part in the misunderstanding, for it was
undeniable that there was a sprightliness, a joyant brightness, in the
flowing red scarf on Ignatius Aloysius's nautical breast, which was
nowhere paralleled in Patrick's more subdued array. And the tenth
commandment seemed very arbitrary to Patrick, the star of St. Mary's
Sunday-school, when he saw that the red silk was attracting nearly all
the attention of his female contingent. If Eva admired flaunting ties it
were well that she should say so now. There was yet time to spare
himself the agony of riding on rubber-neck-boat-birds with one whose
interest wandered from brass buttons. Darkly Patrick scowled upon his
unconscious rival, and guilefully he remarked to Eva:

"Red neckties is nice, don't you think?"

"Awful n