“Not at all,” answered Nickie politely.  “My fault in blocking the path.  My fault, entirely.”

“By Jo-o-ve!” gasped Romeo; “that’s a stunnin’ make-up, old chap—­what?  Nevah saw a bettah, by gad.”

“Make-up?” said Nicholas.  Mr. Crips had for gotten his false nose.

“Ya-as,” said Romeo.  “Your character, you know.  A fellah ’d think you’d just come from sleeping in a rubbish bin.  Yes.  Best Weary Willie I’ve seen.  But aren’t you coming in, dear boy?  You’re a cart for Dolly’s prize for best-sustained character, eh?”

“Presently—­presently.” said Nicholas, smitten with a sudden idea.  “Waiting for a friend, you know.”

Romeo went up the garden path, and Nickie the Kid retired under the shadow of the hedge to allow his thoughts to revolve.  Romeo’s words had suggested possibilities.  Mr. Crips rarely wasted time making up his mind.  Three minutes later he was sauntering jauntily up the garden path on the heels of a laughing Red Indian set.

It was a fancy dress ball.  All the guests were masked or otherwise disguised.  Nickie had never encountered a softer thing.  He determined to make a night of it at the expense of the host of “White-cliff.”  To avoid unpleasantness at the door, Nickie boldly climbed up the trellis of a vine, and entered the noisy crowded ballroom through an open window, rolling head over heels among the guests.

His appearance provoked a shout of laughter.  This was the proper way for a tramp to enter such a house.  It was accepted as a quaint effort of humour.  Weary Willie was applauded, and his appearance, when he rose to his feet, occasioned fresh merriment.

The “make-up” of Mr. Crips was certainly very effective, but with the exception of the false nose it was nothing but his ordinary habit.  He wore a pair of old grey trousers, lashed up with one brace, and belted with a strip of red material; between the fringed legs of this garment and his broken canvas shoes the tops of socks, one white, the other plaid, were plainly visible.  The fact that they were only tops, and not whole socks, was not to be missed, as they had worked up, and an inch of bare ankle protruded.  Nickie’s coat was an old black Beaufort, from which two buttons’ hung on grey threads, which was split half-way up the back, and from below the tails of which fluttered strips of torn lining.  He wore no vest, and had on a woman’s faded pink print blouse as a shirt.  He had a linen collar that had long since lost all claims to whiteness and all pretence of dignity, and his hat was a small round boxer, with scarcely any rim.  On one of the buttons of his Beaufort hung a strip of ordinary sugar bag, on which he had written with a stub of pencil the word “Program.”

Mr. Nicholas Crips looked the part to the life.  He had not shaved for a week, and his lank hair was reaching out in all directions from under his ridiculous hat, and from various strands dangled fragments of his last couch under the boat shed.  Nickie had nothing of the painted, unconvincing theatrical accessories of the usual fancy dress tramp; he looked real, and his success was instantaneous and complete.