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Rh And an incredibly vast gulf lay between the Princess Mariana and the female Shylock who peered at him over a glass show-case filled with material pledges in the shape of watches, chains, rings, bracelets, and other gaudy tributes left by a shifting constitutency.

"Well?" she demanded, fixing him with a cold, offensive stare. "What do you want?"

He turned down the collar of his thin coat, and straightened his slight figure in response to this unfriendly greeting.

"I came to see if you would allow me to take my overcoat for a few days,—until this cold spell is over,—with the understanding—"

"Nothing doing," said she curtly. "Six dollars due on it."

"But I have not the six dollars, madam. Surely you may trust me."

"Why didn't you bring your fiddle along? You could leave it in place of the coat. Go and get it and I'll see what I can do."

"I am to play tonight at the house of a Mr. Carpenter. He has heard of me through our friend Mr. Trotter, his chauffeur. You know Mr. Trotter, of course."

"Sure I know him, and I don't like him. He insulted me once."

"Ah, but you do not understand him, madam. He is an Englishman and he may have tried to be facetious or even pleasant in the way the English—"

"Say, don't you suppose I know when I'm insulted? When a cheap guy like that comes in here with a customer of mine and tells me I'm so damned mean they