"
"How came you to know him?"
"Well, sor, he had an old lady on his list two years ago that was always
disputin' distances and goin' to law about her cab-fares. I picked her
up one day in St. James Street and druv her to Kensington Gardens and
charged her the rates, and she kicked and had me up before the
magistrate, and this old ink-bottle appeared for her. She's rich and
always in hot water. Well, we had it measured and I was right, and it
cost her me fare and fifteen bob besides. When it was figured up she
owed me sixpence more measurement I hadn't charged her for the first
time, and I summoned her and made her pay it and twelve bob more to
teach her manners. What pay he got I don't know, but I got me sixpence.
He was born back here about a mile--that's why he comes here for
his holiday."
Fin stopped stowing cargo--two bottles of soda, a piece of ice in a
bucket, two canvases, my big easel and a lunch-basket--and moving his
cap back from his freckled forehead said, with as much gravity as he
could maintain:
"I ought to have been a barrister, sor; I started as one.
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