The Missing Link | Page 7

man-servant threw Nickie off the verandah, and threw
his billy after him, but this did not deter Nicholas from an attempt to
enter into familiar conversation bearing on family matters, when he
found the dignified lady in a summer house.
The lady glared at him in stony horror. "How dare you?" she ejaculated.
"How dare you?"
"Why, what's wrong, Jinny, old girl." asked Crips innocently, assuming
a lounging attitude in the doorway. "You find the togs I'm wearin' a
trifle too negligee, so to speak. They're quite the thing in our set."

"Let me pass!" ejaculated the lady with crushing hauteur.
Nickie was not impressed. He smiled, and continued dreamily: "My
word, things have moved with you, Jinny. You're gone up like er rocket
in er reg'lar blaze iv glory, but I can still see yeh in the old shop days.
You blazed then too, old girl. It wasn't with di'monds, 'twas fish scales,
but you blazed. You could alwiz put on dog. You sold flathead, Jinny,
but I give the devil his due--you did it like a duchess."
At this point the Napoleonic footman intervened again. He took Nickie
by his rags and the nape of his neck, and running him tip-toe out of the
garden, tumbled him headlong on the grass-grown roadside. Nickie
rejoined Stub McGuire quite unconcerned.
"That's a new society game, my friend," he said. "The flunkey scored
ten points."
A few hours later the proprietor of the cement mansion came to his gate,
and beckoned Nicholas Crips off the heap. Nickie the Kid responded
with alacrity, and Stub McGuire gazed in cow-like wonder while the
two discussed matters in the gateway.
Nickie was calling him "Bill," "Billy," and "Willyum," indiscriminately.
Stub nearly fainted when he saw the gentleman draw a bank-note from
his pocket, and hand it to Nicholas Crips. Nickie lifted his deplorable
hat, and said:
"So long, Bill. I'm sorry I can't come an' stay a month. Some other time,
perhaps."
The gentleman went in, and slammed the gate behind him. Nickie
returned to the heap, and picked up his coat and donned it.
"I'm handing in my resignation, Mr. McGuire," he said. "You are
welcome to my earnings, as I intend to live on my means--temporary at
least." He held up the note.
"A tenner!" gasped McGuire.

"A tenner!" replied Nicholas, "presented by the kind gentleman on
condition that I emigrate from this suburb and absent myself
permanently. The worst thing about rich relations, Stub, is that they
want whole suburbs to themselves; the best is that you can make them
pay for the privilege of exclusiveness."
CHAPTER III.
THE MASK BALL.
NICKIE the Kid only observed his agreements and kept honourable
promises so long as some material advantage flowed from his
complaisance. Within a month he was again haunting the vicinity of the
white mansion. One night he leaned against the fence and watched a
procession of guests alighting from their vehicles. Splendid motors
dashed up, and loads of gaily-dressed ladies and gentlemen quaintly
caparisoned were discharged at the great iron gates, and went trooping
up the path to the flaring white residence, blazing like a crystal palace
in a fairy tale.
Nickie was not exactly envious, but looking through the iron railing at
the gay array of lanterns in the vast garden, and the glowing mansion,
and hearing the hubbub of cheerful voices and the laughter, he had a
dawning sense that respectability, especially well-to-do respectability,
had its compensations after all.
He walked to the gate for a better view, and discovered a strange object
lying on the path. It was a false nose, a large, red, boosy nose, with, a
length of elastic to hold it in its place. One of the guests had dropped it.
Nickie put it on in a waggish humour, and stood moralising as three
pretty Spanish dancers, in charge of a toreador, passed in.
Nickie loved gaiety, waster and rapscallion as he was--sunshine, colour,
flowers, beautiful women, life, music and laughter shook passions
loose within him. Another little kink in his brain might have made a
poet of him, just as the smallest turn of chance might have made a
deadbeat of almost any poet of parts.

Mr. Crips actually sighed over that vision of fair women, and longed to
be that happy toreador.
"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we, too, into the
dust descend: Dust unto dust, and under dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans
Song, sans Singer, and--sans End."
The quotation had just escaped our hero lips when a young fellow
garbed as Romeo, alighting from a hansom, dashed into him.
"By Jove, that was dooced awkward of me--yes, I beg your pardon, I'm
sure. Should have looked where I was going--what? said Romeo.
"Not at all," answered Nickie