orm darnin' them stockings
as if there wasn't no such thing as an admirin' public below. It's
just her _self_. Git me? 'Give Up A Throne To Wed A Butcher's
Daughter.' Understand? Why, God bless you, Richard, if she was a Fiji
Island Cannibal I'd love her just the same!"

"I think, Mr. Poddle," the boy ventured, "that I'd tell her."

"I did," Mr. Poddle replied. "Much to my regrets I did. I writ.
Worked up a beautiful piece out of 'The Lightning Letter-writer for
Lovers.' 'Oh, beauteous Sword-Swallower,' I writ, 'pet of the public,
pride of the sideshow, bright particular star in the constellation of
natural phenomenons! One who is not unknown to fame is dazzled by your
charms. He dares to lift his stricken eyes, to give vent to the
tumultuous beatings of his manly bosom, to send you, in fact, this
note. And if you want to know who done it, wear a red rose to-night.'
Well," Mr. Poddle continued, "she seen me give it to the peanut-boy.
And knowin' who it come from, she writ back. She writ," Mr. Poddle
dramatically repeated, "right back."

The pause was so long, so painful, that the boy was moved to inquire
concerning the answer.

"It stabs me," said Mr. Poddle.

"I think I'd like to know," said the boy.

"'Are you much give,' says she, 'to barkin' in your sleep?'"

A very real tear left the eye of Mr. Poddle, ran down the hair of his
cheek, changed its course to the eyebrow, and there hung glistening....

It was apparent that the Dog-faced Man's thoughts must immediately be
diverted into more cheerful channels. "Won't you please read to me,
Mr. Poddle," said the boy, "what it says in the paper about my mother?"

The ruse was effective. Mr. Poddle looked up with a start. "Eh?" he
ejaculated.

"Won't you?" the boy begged.

"I been talkin' so much, Richard," Mr. Poddle stammered, turning hoarse
all at once, "that I gone and lost my voice."

He decamped to his room across the hall without another word.

[Illustration: Headpiece to _At Midnight_]

_AT MIDNIGHT_

At midnight the boy had long been sound asleep in bed. The lamp was
turned low. It was very quiet in the room--quiet and shadowy in all
the tenement.... And the stair creaked; and footfalls shuffled along
the hall--and hesitated at the door of the place where the child lay
quietly sleeping; and there ceased. There was the rumble of a man's
voice, deep, insistent, imperfectly restrained. A woman protested.
The door wa