“Is that all!  Take your money and give your terrors a rest.”

Tracy’s hand went down into his pocket with angry decision.  But—­it didn’t come out.  The color began to ebb out of his face.  The countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction.  There was an uncomfortable pause—­then he forced out, with difficulty, the words: 

“I’ve—­been robbed!”

Old Marsh’s eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed: 

“Robbed, is it?  That’s your tune?  It’s too old—­been played in this house too often; everybody plays it that can’t get work when he wants it, and won’t work when he can get it.  Trot out Mr. Allen, somebody, and let him take a toot at it.  It’s his turn next, he forgot, too, last night.  I’m laying for him.”

One of the negro women came scrambling down stairs as pale as a sorrel horse with consternation and excitement: 

“Misto Marsh, Misto Allen’s skipped out!”

“What!”

“Yes-sah, and cleaned out his room clean; tuck bofe towels en de soap!”

“You lie, you hussy!”

“It’s jes’ so, jes’ as I tells you—­en Misto Summer’s socks is gone, en Misto Naylor’s yuther shirt.”

Mr. Marsh was at boiling point by this time.  He turned upon Tracy: 

“Answer up now—­when are you going to settle?”

“To-day—­since you seem to be in a hurry.”

“To-day is it?  Sunday—­and you out of work?  I like that.  Come—­where are you going to get the money?”

Tracy’s spirit was rising again.  He proposed to impress these people: 

“I am expecting a cablegram from home.”

Old Marsh was caught out, with the surprise of it.  The idea was so immense, so extravagant, that he couldn’t get his breath at first.  When he did get it, it came rancid with sarcasm.

“A cablegram—­think of it, ladies and gents, he’s expecting a cablegram!  He’s expecting a cablegram—­this duffer, this scrub, this bilk!  From his father—­eh?  Yes—­without a doubt.  A dollar or two a word—­oh, that’s nothing—­they don’t mind a little thing like that—­this kind’s fathers don’t.  Now his father is—­er—­well, I reckon his father—­”

“My father is an English earl!”

The crowd fell back aghast-aghast at the sublimity of the young loafer’s “cheek.”  Then they burst into a laugh that made the windows rattle.  Tracy was too angry to realize that he had done a foolish thing.  He said: 

“Stand aside, please.  I—­”

“Wait a minute, your lordship,” said Marsh, bowing low, “where is your lordship going?”

“For the cablegram.  Let me pass.”

“Excuse me, your lordship, you’ll stay right where you are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I didn’t begin to keep boarding-house yesterday.  It means that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver’s son that comes loafing over here because he can’t bum a living at home.  It means that you can’t skip out on any such—­”