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 Senator Clark’s mansion.

Eight months went 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 policemen’s heads, held up late travellers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth Avenue’s cut of clothes and neckwear fancies, and comported itself according to its lawless by-laws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his finger-nails and it took him fifteen minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places would not show.

One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly’s house.

“Open that, Moll!” he said in his large, quiet way. “It’s for you.”

Molly’s eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve.

Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and enveloped her neck like an anaconda.

“Russian sables,” said the Kid pridefully, enjoying the sight of Molly’s round cheek against the clinging fur. “The real thing. They don’t grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.”

Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To make bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a bewitching smile: Recipe—one set Russian sables. Apply.

When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness.

“You’re a bird, all right, Kid,” she admitted gratefully. “I never had any furs on before in my life. But ain’t Russian sables awful expensive? Seems to me I’ve heard they were.”

“Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?” asked the Kid, with calm dignity. “Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won’t make any mistake about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you, Moll.”

Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye sadly and steadily.

He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint flush upon his face.

“Cut it out,” he said, with affectionate roughness. “I told you I was done with that. I bought ’em and paid for ’em all right, with my own money!”

“Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?”

“Sure. I been saving up.”

“Let’s see—saved $425 in eight months, Kid?”