The train rattled on.  Once or twice, when it stopped, the girl seemed undecided whether to leave or remain.  She half rose, then sank back again.  Finally she walked resolutely out of the car, and Archie, following, found himself in a part of New York strange to him.  The inhabitants of this district appeared to eke out a precarious existence, not by taking in one another’s washing, but by selling one another second-hand clothes.

Archie glanced at his watch.  He had lunched early, but so crowded with emotions had been the period following lunch that he was surprised to find that the hour was only just two.  The discovery was a pleasant one.  With a full hour before the scheduled start of the game, much might be achieved.  He hurried after the girl, and came us with her just as she turned the comer into one of those forlorn New York side-streets which are populated chiefly by children, cats, desultory loafers, and empty meat-tins.

The girl stopped and turned.  Archie smiled a winning smile.

“I say, my dear sweet creature!” he said.  “I say, my dear old thing, one moment!”

“Is that so?” said the Girl Friend.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is that so?”

Archie began to feel certain tremors.  Her eyes were gleaming, and her determined mouth had become a perfectly straight line of scarlet.  It was going to be difficult to be chatty to this girl.  She was going to be a hard audience.  Would mere words be able to touch her heart?  The thought suggested itself that, properly speaking, one would need to use a pick-axe.

“If you could spare me a couples of minutes of your valuable time—­”

“Say!” The lady drew herself up menacingly.  “You tie a can to yourself and disappear!  Fade away, or I’ll call a cop!”

Archie was horrified at this misinterpretation of his motives.  One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased.  Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary.  The loafer nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same wall.  The children, abandoning the meat-tin round which their game had centred, drew closer.

“My dear old soul!” said Archie.  “You don’t understand!”

“Don’t I!  I know your sort, you trailing arbutus!”

“No, no!  My dear old thing, believe me!  I wouldn’t dream!”

“Are you going or aren’t you?”

Eleven more children joined the ring of spectators.  The loafers stared silently, like awakened crocodiles.

“But, I say, listen!  I only wanted—­”

At this point another voice spoke.

“Say!”

The word “Say!” more almost than any word in the American language, is capable of a variety of shades of expression.  It can be genial, it can be jovial, it can be appealing.  It can also be truculent The “Say!” which at this juncture smote upon Archie’s ear-drum with a suddenness which made him leap in the air was truculent; and the two loafers and twenty-seven children who now formed the audience were well satisfied with the dramatic development of the performance.  To their experienced ears the word had the right ring.