Nickie sat down.  He placed his hat very carefully on the carpet, folded his arms, and crossed his legs.  “You are very kind,” he said.  “May I ask if a compulsory lunch goes with this unwarrantable detention?”

“That remains to be seen,” replied James.  “I am going to offer you your choice of two courses.  You will either submit yourself to my deliberate intention of making a good, clean, respectable, industrious member of society of you, or you will walk out of this place into gaol.”

Nickie’s mind was made up instantly, but he did not capitulate in too great a hurry; he talked of conditions, and asked for details of his expected regeneration.  The Rev. Nippit explained his belief that all men had in them the elements of decency, order and religion.  Those elements only needed proper opportunities for development.  He purposed giving Nickie the opportunities.  He needed a handy man about the house; Nickie was to have the job.  He would be expected to bathe every day, to shave every day, and observe the decencies of the well-ordered home.

“And you are prepared to believe you can reform me?” said Nickie the Kid.

“I am not only prepared to believe it—­I am determined to believe it,” said the young clergyman, thumping the table.

Nickie smiled again.  “I submit myself to the experiment” he said, “but promise nothing.  I don’t think you will succeed.  Your intentions are good, but mine are not, and it takes two to make a bargain.”

Nickie entered his new duties at once.  After lunch he took a shovel into the garden and toyed with the earth a while, and then he went to sleep under a tree.  The Rev. Nippit awakened him and talked with him in a firm but kindly spirit on the virtues of honest dealings with one’s employer, and the necessity of industry to keep the world wagging, Nickie’ graciously admitted that it was all very true.  But when set to clean out the fowl-house he sat on a stone and held converse with an educated cockatoo next door.

That evening, clean-shaven, freshly-bathed, dressed in a cast-off suit of James Nippit’s, whole if slightly rusty, and robbed of its clerical significance, Nickie the Kid attended a religions function with his reverend employer.  Nickie was orderly, wakeful and fairly attentive.  When the plate came round he put threepence in, but he took a shilling out.  It was a useful trick, taught him by an expert in the art of rigging the thimble and the pea.  Nickie, when he had fairly good clothes, often attended church merely to practise it.  To-night the exploit was more an act of unseemly and impious levity than a crime.

The Rev. Nippit had a theory which he believed would succeed with nine malefactors out of ten if exerted under fair conditions it was based on kindness, forebearance and the inculcation of excellent precepts.