"Shut up!"
"Come over to Sheffield and get up a game of poker with Tom Kelly."
At this juncture, Stover and McCarthy rising in wrath, McNab would beat a hurried retreat, dodging whatever came sailing after him. Much aggrieved, he would go down the hall, trying the different doors, which had been locked against his approach.
About this time Buck Waters, moved by similar impulses, would appear and the two would camp down on the top step and practise duets, until a furious uprising in the house would drive them ignominiously on to the street.
Left to their own resources, they would wander aimlessly about the city, inventing a hundred methods to accomplish the most difficult of all feats, killing time.
On one particular morning in early November, McNab and Buck Waters, being refused admission to three houses on York Street, and the affront being aggravated by jeers and epithets of the coarsest kind, went arm in arm on mischief bent.
"I say, what let's do?" said McNab disconsolately.
"We must do something new," said Buck Waters.
"We certainly must."
"Well, let's try the old clothes gag," said McNab; "that always amuses a little."