that is supposed to charm the budding intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging her Betsy close.
There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy’s hand ten ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions.
James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far as the front door.
When the money touched Fuzzy’s dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind’s eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining foot-rests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to him.
He followed James to the door.
He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for him to pass into the vestibule.
Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway;