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Rh But the alcoholic youth wouldn't deliver the painting.

"You shtole this once, MacAllshter, but you don't get 'way with it again."

At this the girl raised her tousled black head from her voluptuous elbows, and broke in.

"Say, Mac, what did yuh try that fool stunt for? Second story worker—huh! I thought yuh had more sense. Yuh mighta got filled with lead." She paused and surveyed him slyly, almost with a challenge—"I suppose yuh thought I'd double cross yuh, didn't yuh?"

"Women have been known to change their minds," he responded.

"Yuh said it, Mac, I nearly did."

"Well, Hermione, little flower of the slums, pure lily springing from the mire"—the ironic epithets fell from his bloodless lips with a delicate, almost melodious, lilt—"in changing yours, see that you don't short-change yourself."

Meanwhile, during these retorts most courteous, the youth, replenished from the flask with which the man called MacAllister was maliciously plying him, gazed down at the painting.

"Funny lil ol' islan', ain't it now?" He kept repeating the idea as if it vastly amused him, "but whaz zis?" his tongue failing him a little more, "muz be lil tent."

"That's a mountain, son," the leader informed him.

"Mountain!" the boy echoed it vaguely as most astounding information, "but whaz zis, tthhen? Ol' Doc Sawbones—how are you, ol' top?" (bowing gravely to the skull and crossbones) "an' that mus' be ad for Turkssh cigaret."