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 shop at that moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded at him friendly.

“I heard down at Casey’s,” said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones, ‘that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners’ Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?”

“Sure,” said Finch. “There’ll be a dandy time.”

“Gimme five tickets,” said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the showcase.

“Why,” said Finch, “ain’t you going it a little too—”

“Go to h!” said the cop. “You got ’em to sell, ain’t you? Somebody’s got to buy ’em. Wish I could go along.”

I was glad to see Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood.

And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

“Mamma says,” she recited shrilly, “that you must give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with—but she didn’t say that,” the elf concluded, with a hopeful but honest grin.

Finch shelled out the money, counting it Rh