“He made a big hit, ’specially with the ladies.  Some of ’em would poke him with their fingers to see if he was real or only a kind of a stuffed figure like they burn in elegy.  And when he’d move they’d squeak, and make eyes at him as they went up to the slosh.  He looked fine in his halberdashery.  He slept at $2 a week in a hall-room on Third Avenue.  He invited me up there one night.  He had a little book on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours.  ‘I’m on to that,’ says I, ’from reading about it in novels.  All the heroes on the bum carry the little book.  It’s either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you’re a college man.  And I wouldn’t be surprised,’ says I, ’if you wasn’t educated, too.’  But it was only the batting averages of the League for the last ten years.

“One night, about half past eleven, there comes in a party of these high-rollers that are always hunting up new places to eat in and poke fun at.  There was a swell girl in a 40 H.-P. auto tan coat and veil, and a fat old man with white side-whiskers, and a young chap that couldn’t keep his feet off the tail of the girl’s coat, and an oldish lady that looked upon life as immoral and unnecessary.  ’How perfectly delightful,’ they says, ‘to sup in a slosh.’  Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach.  She stops on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.

“‘You!’ she says, with a smile that reminded me of lemon sherbet.  I was waiting up-stairs in the slosh, then, and I was right down here by the door, putting some vinegar and cayenne into an empty bottle of tabasco, and I heard all they said.

“‘It,’ says Sir Percival, without moving.  ’I’m only local colour.  Are my hauberk, helmet, and halberd on straight?’

“‘Is there an explanation to this?’ says she.  ’Is it a practical joke such as men play in those Griddle-cake and Lamb Clubs?  I’m afraid I don’t see the point.  I heard, vaguely, that you were away.  For three months I—­we have not seen you or heard from you.’

“‘I’m halberdiering for my living,’ says the stature.  ‘I’m working,’ says he.  ‘I don’t suppose you know what work means.’

“‘Have you—­have you lost your money?’ she asks.

“Sir Percival studies a minute.

“‘I am poorer,’ says he, ’than the poorest sandwich man on the streets—­if I don’t earn my living.’

“‘You call this work?’ says she.  ’I thought a man worked with his hands or his head instead of becoming a mountebank.’

“‘The calling of a halberdier,’ says he, ’is an ancient and honourable one.  Sometimes,’ says he, ’the man-at-arms at the door has saved the castle while the plumed knights were cake-walking in the banquet-halls above.’

“‘I see you’re not ashamed,’ says she, ’of your peculiar tastes.  I wonder, though, that the manhood I used to think I saw in you didn’t prompt you to draw water or hew wood instead of publicly flaunting your ignominy in this disgraceful masquerade.’