Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/56

46 was a touch of impatience in his movements as he crossed over to what he hoped might prove a more comfortable chair. He had no intention of letting a snip of a girl Cook's-guide him about his own city, the city he'd lived in for some sixty-odd years. And he wasn't such a stranger to Greenwich Village as she imagined, for through the mists of time he could still remember Ned Harrigan and Perry Street, and Sim Sharp and certain Tough Club chowders of the olden and golden days.

"So you're going straight, are you!" he snapped out, with only the light in his kindly old eyes to contradict the bruskness of his speech. "Well, all I have to say is that you're a wonder if you can go straight in a district like this. Good gad, ma'am, even the streets don't go straight down here. They're as deluded as the benzine-daubers who tramp them. And it may be none of my business, but I've an itch to know what's going to happen to a high-spirited girl who's veering dead south when she dreams she's heading due west."

"And that means," suggested Teddie,