“A pity,” said Nickie, suavely, “a pity, madam.  No home should be without the refining influence of good music.”

The woman passed in as Nickie passed out, and the latter looked back over the gate, and said, “Good morning, lady,” with profound respect.

Nickie must have forgotten all about his weak heart; the dash he made out of that right-of-way, across the street, down a second right-of-way, and into a public garden, would not have discredited a trained pedestrian.  An hour later Mr. Crips was seated in a secluded spot on the river bank, taking stock.  He possessed one very second-hand black bag and four dozen four-ounce bottles.  The Kid’s intention in the first place had been to dispose of the loot at the nearest marine store, but Nickie was a man of ideas, and one had come to him there in his loneliness.  He hid his bag of bottles, and wandered into the city.  After several misses he succeeded in begging sixpence to buy cough drops for his influenza.

He paid threepence for the cough drops at a convenient hotel, and took them in bulk.  With his change he purchased threepence worth of small corks.  Back at the Yarra Nickie the Kid dissolved one of three gingernuts he had taken from the bar lunch in a two pound jam tin of river water, and started to fill his bottles.  He filled one dozen.

Having explained to a small knot of brother professionals that he needed change of air and scenery, Nickie the Kid started out of town that afternoon.  We next discover him seated under a spreading gum in a pleasant sweep of sunny landscape at Tarra, with his trousers in his hands, carefully and systematically repairing and renovating the same.  The frock coat had been “restored,” the rag cap was abandoned in favour of a limp bell-topper, contributed by the family of a benevolent clergyman, and the tan boots were artistically blacked with stove polish.  Nickie the Kid warbled at his work with the innocent gaiety of a bird.

It was not yet sundown, and Nicholas Crips was clothed, and stood with his black Gladstone in his right hand, prepared for the campaign.  He had had a clean shave, and his face had a sort of calm dignity touched with benevolence.  He turned round, examining himself, and the coat-tails floated gracefully in the breeze.

“Eminently satisfactory,” said Mr. Crips.  “And now for business.”  He cleared his throat, as if about to commence an oration, and set off at a smart pace towards the farm-house whose chimneys peeped over the hill.

A dog barked surlily as Nickie passed up the garden walk, but Nickie knew the character and quality of dogs, no beat better, and he recognised this one as harmless to man.  A woman came to the door, wiping her fat, red arms on a canvas apron.

“A very good day to you, madam,” said Mr. Crips, lifting his belltopper with some grace, and bowing slightly.  “I have taken the liberty of calling upon you to bring under your attention my celebrated medicine—­Dr. Crips’s Healing Mixture, for coughs, colds, consumption indigestion, biliousness and all bronchial complaints.”