“So long, Bill.  I’m sorry I can’t come an’ stay a month.  Some other time, perhaps.”

The gentleman went in, and slammed the gate behind him.  Nickie returned to the heap, and picked up his coat and donned it.

“I’m handing in my resignation, Mr. McGuire,” he said.  “You are welcome to my earnings, as I intend to live on my means—­temporary at least.”  He held up the note.

“A tenner!” gasped McGuire.

“A tenner!” replied Nicholas, “presented by the kind gentleman on condition that I emigrate from this suburb and absent myself permanently.  The worst thing about rich relations, Stub, is that they want whole suburbs to themselves; the best is that you can make them pay for the privilege of exclusiveness.”

CHAPTER III.

The mask ball.

Nickie the Kid only observed his agreements and kept honourable promises so long as some material advantage flowed from his complaisance.  Within a month he was again haunting the vicinity of the white mansion.  One night he leaned against the fence and watched a procession of guests alighting from their vehicles.  Splendid motors dashed up, and loads of gaily-dressed ladies and gentlemen quaintly caparisoned were discharged at the great iron gates, and went trooping up the path to the flaring white residence, blazing like a crystal palace in a fairy tale.

Nickie was not exactly envious, but looking through the iron railing at the gay array of lanterns in the vast garden, and the glowing mansion, and hearing the hubbub of cheerful voices and the laughter, he had a dawning sense that respectability, especially well-to-do respectability, had its compensations after all.

He walked to the gate for a better view, and discovered a strange object lying on the path.  It was a false nose, a large, red, boosy nose, with, a length of elastic to hold it in its place.  One of the guests had dropped it.  Nickie put it on in a waggish humour, and stood moralising as three pretty Spanish dancers, in charge of a toreador, passed in.

Nickie loved gaiety, waster and rapscallion as he was—­sunshine, colour, flowers, beautiful women, life, music and laughter shook passions loose within him.  Another little kink in his brain might have made a poet of him, just as the smallest turn of chance might have made a deadbeat of almost any poet of parts.

Mr. Crips actually sighed over that vision of fair women, and longed to be that happy toreador.

   “Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
   Before we, too, into the dust descend: 
   Dust unto dust, and under dust to lie,
   Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—­sans End.”

The quotation had just escaped our hero lips when a young fellow garbed as Romeo, alighting from a hansom, dashed into him.

“By Jove, that was dooced awkward of me—­yes, I beg your pardon, I’m sure.  Should have looked where I was going—­what? said Romeo.