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LONELY O'MALLEY

nose went deep down in the pail, and he drank freely and eagerly.

But to the casuistic-grown Lonely a kick was a kick, and many were the deliberations and devices to force the perverted Plato to refresh himself after some more enlightened and humane procedure.

The obdurate Plato, however, had little or no idea of conduct, and Lonely piously decided that this was to be one of the thorns in the side of his new-found beatitude. It was something to be borne in meek and unprotesting silence, along with the taunts and gibes of the Gang when they came upon him unexpectedly in the comfortable and lumbering old rockaway, along with Miss Mehetabel Wilkins, on the way home from a day of cherry-picking in the country—as a reward for that new and deeper seriousness of mind so rare and yet so becoming in the young.

On this occasion, it must be recorded, the smug and serenely satisfied face of his old—time tutor in sin so worked on the feelings of the dusty Lionel Clarence that he climbed boldly up on the back of the old carriage, for the avowed purpose of punching Lonely’s head.