Dobbs made many suggestions as to pictures, but Allan did not find it to be possible to act upon many of them. He made some pictures in the squares,—a tramp asleep, the Plaza at Twenty-third Street, carriage-crowded Fifth Avenue, the kaleidoscopic bustle at the Grand Central.
When they were on the train again, Allan began to feel that it had been a notable day. Taking the pictures had made the trip seem more interesting than ever before, and the arrest—
He hated to think about the arrest. It had happened by no fault of his, unless it might be the fault of leaving the camera where he did when he helped carry the old woman into the house. But he felt soiled by it, and grew red in the face again at the thought of the crowds that had looked at him and perhaps measured him as a criminal.
“A tramp asleep.”
When they parted Dobbs made Allan promise to let him have a proof of Sporty’s picture as soon as he could. “I’d like to have a squint at those others too,” he said.
Allan himself was eager to see the results of his day’s work with the camera; and although his mother and Edith were much absorbed in his account of the day’s incidents, he spent the half-hour before supper in preparing the dark-room for the developing.
Edith followed him and had a score of inquiries as to the Bowery, and the mysterious alley, and Broadway, and the battle with the boys.
“And just to think, Allan, those horrid police might have locked you in a cell like a common criminal.”
“Anyway, I was glad to see Mr. Dobbs,” said Allan. “He used to be on the force in New York, and he knows everybody.”