Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/79

 the hat and five dollars for the shoes! Gee! And then the meter began again—measuring Fifth Avenue in dimes.

He had been aware in the shop that Babbing was posing as his father and enjoying the part; and he had had an awful moment of fear that there might be holes in his stockings when the clerk unlaced his shoes. There were none. A woman, whom he vaguely recalled as his mother, had darned those stockings for him in a Cinderella world that had since been lost in the whirr of a fairy godfather’s golden chariot. He caught Babbing smiling at him in the chariot; and he snickered excitedly.

When the cab stopped, Babbing reached the handle of the door and said “Keep right up with me, now, but don’t open your mouth”; and Barney stepped out of the cab as if it had been an aeroplane, and found himself on the earth again, in front of the Hotel Haarlem on 42nd Street near the Grand Central station. He defended Babbing’s satchel from