90 
THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 
“ MOLLY.” 
wariest , and the most successful plotter in 
the gang. Therefore the boys were sorry to 
give him up. Rut they witnessed his fall 
to a virtuous life without protest. For, in 
the Kitchen, it is considered neither unmanly 
nor improper for a man to do as his girl 
advises. 
Black her eye for love's sake, if you will ; 
but it is all-to-the-good business to do a thing 
when she wants you to do it. 
“ Turn off the hydrant / 5 said the Kid, one 
night when Molly, tearful, besought him to 
amend his ways. “ I'm going to cut the 
gang. You be mine, and I’ll go straight, 
ill tell you, Moll — I’ll get work; and in 
a year we’ll get married. I’ll do it for 
you. We’ll get a flat and a flute and a 
sewing-machine, and live as honest as we 
can.” 
“ Oh, Kid ! ” sighed Molly, wiping the 
powder off his shoulder with her handkerchief, 
“ I’d rather hear you say that than own all 
New York. And we can be happy on so 
little ! ” 
The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs 
and shining patent- leathers with a suspicion 
of melancholy. 
“ It’ll hurt hardest in the rags department/’ 
said he. “ I’ve kind of always liked to rig 
out swell when I could. You know how I 
hate cheap things, Moll. Anything in the 
wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or 
it’s no good for me. If I work I won’t have 
so much coin to hand over to the little man 
with the big shears.” 
“ Never mind. Kid. I’ll like you just, as 
much in a blue jumper as I would in a red 
automobile.” 
Before the Kid had grown large enough to 
knock out his father he had been compelled 
to learn the plumber’s art. So now back to 
this honourable and useful profession he 
returned. But it was as an assistant that he 
engaged himself ; and it is the master plumber 
and not the assistant who wears diamonds as 
large as hailstones and looks contemptuously 
upon the marble colonnades of millionaires’ 
mansions. 
Eight months w r ent by as smoothly and 
surely as though they had “ elapsed ” on a 
theatre programme. The Kid worked away 
at his pipes and solder with no symptoms of 
backsliding. The Stovepipe Gang continued 
its piracy on the high avenues, cracked police- 
men’s heads, held up late travellers, invented 
*• MOLLY WAS TEAKFUL t J 
