Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/46

 been well, had not Alaska Alice set up a sudden, energetic, and inopportune wail, which grew into a bawl, and from a bawl became a paroxysm.

A shout of derisive laughter swelled up from the street. A tomato can hit Lonely on the shin-bone, a pebble or two cut through the canvas of the little tent.

"Soak the gypsies!" cried Redney McWilliams, as he took one last sly fling at the meek-eyed Plato.

"Ain't this the Klondike millionaire's?" mocked another.

"Say, Sis, what y' doin' in boy's clothes?" demanded Piggie Brennan, sweetly, as he kicked the little front gate open.

Lonely winced at that stab, and took a dark and studious look at the offender. There, above all, he told himself, was an enemy he was to remember and an offense he was to wipe out!

The band drifted aimlessly on, and a minute later was cutting fishing-poles from the Gubtill's lilac-bushes. They had not even so much as offered to fight! They had not even sent forth the inevitable challenge to the New