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 step in the calendar of railroad nobility that he could not hide his new brilliance in bed very long, no matter for having been awake all the way from Argentine to McPacken the night before. Eleven o'clock saw him out of bed and shaved, and down to the front sidewalkporch with a pair of blue suspenders, blue sleeve-holders to match, enough pomatum on his sleek, short-cut black hair for two bigger men, and perfume in excess for a dozen.

His nellygee shirt, as he called it, making two words of it, like the name and initial of a lady friend, was pink-striped. Windy wore it without a necktie, the soft collar open on his classical throat, the sleeves turned back midway of his forearms, in the accepted railroad style. He was very satisfactorily arrayed, and altogether irresistible.

Banjo Gibson was not gracing a bench in front of the hotel that morning; Angus Valorous was still pounding his ear in dreams of conductorial eminence. Windy had the whole thing to himself, a little pink spot against a big green background of hotel, like a chigger on a leaf. It was a fine arrangement for the vanity of Windy Moore, suitable to his new importance.

Windy had a cigarette plastered to the corner of his sneering, disdainful mouth. What little of the world was not his a man could have put into a gunny sack and carried away. He was ready for the noon whistle, all set and waiting to pass out patronizing nods, high-signs and greetings by word of mouth to the un-