"Whiplash win in the fi'th," he volunteered presently.
"Yes?" said I with a polite but spurious show of interest.
"Under a pull. Spread-eagled his field."
"Who is Whiplash, may I ask?"
"Oh, Gaw!" said the pink man, appalled. He searched my face
suspiciously. "A hoss," he stated at length, satisfied of my ignorance.
After several reflective puffs, the smoke of which insufficiently veiled
his furtive appraisal of myself, he tried again:
"They give O'Dowd a shade, last night."
"Indeed? Who did?"
"The sporting writers."
"As a testimonial?" I inquired, adding that a shade, whether of the lamp
or sun species seemed an unusual sort of gift.
My interlocutor groaned. He drew from the pocket of his gray-check
cutaway, purple and fine linen, the purple being an ornate and
indecipherable monogram, wherewith to wipe his troubled brow. Susan
Gluck's Orphan, who was playing down-wind, paused to inhale deeply and
with a beatific expression. Restoring the fragrant square to its
repository, the pink one essayed another conversational skirmish.
"The Reds copped again yesterday."
"If you are referring to the raid on Anarchist Headquarters in Avenue C,
I should have inferred that the Reds _were_ copped, to use your term."
Curt and contemptuous laughter was his response. "Don't you ever read
the papers, down here?"
"Certainly," I retorted with some spirit, for the implied slur upon Our
Square stung me.
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