THE CRUCIBLE OF CHARACTER
OF all his friends Russell Wentworth Russell liked Snapsie Doogan the best.
The reasons for this were many. Snapsie belonged to a world far distant from his own, and told him of weird and wonderful things that took place in Foreign Parts, vaguely but alluringly known as the Ward.
Then, again, there was no one to order Snapsie's going out or his coming in, and this alone almost deified Snapsie in his eyes. To Russell Wentworth Russell, who had a governess and a French maid, to say nothing of a mamma who was always telling him not to do things, such undreamed of liberty as Snapsie's seemed incredible and god-like.
As for Snapsie, he had neither maid, governess, nor mother, but gloated unnecessarily
83
