His retreating footsteps went lightly away down the empty street.
"Annything don't throuble him!" said the boots bitterly.
As for me, nothing save the Personal Element stood between me and destitution.
It was in the dark of the early morning that I woke again to life and its troubles. A voice, dropping, as it were, over the edge of some smothering over-world, had awakened me. It was the voice of the First Prize for Reels, descending through a pocket of the billiard-table.
"I beg your pardon, sir, are ye going on the 5 to Cork?"
I grunted a negative.
"Well, if ye were, ye'd be late," said the voice.
I received this useful information in indignant silence, and endeavoured to wrap myself again in the vanishing skirts of a dream.
"I'm going on the 6.30 meself," proceeded the voice, "and it's unknown to me how I'll put on me boots. Me feet is swelled the size o' three-pound loaves with the dint of the little dancing-shoes I had on me in the competition last night. Me feet's delicate that way, and I'm a great epicure about me boots."
I snored aggressively, but the dream was gone. So, for all practical purposes, was the night.