ADVENTURE XXI.
AN IDYLL OF BOGIE ROLL.
Perhaps it was in sheer desperation that Cleaver's boy (whose name, by the way, was James Annan, though the fact was hardly ever mentioned except in the police court) at last resolved to make a desperate cast.
"They canna baith hae me," he said, "an' Guid kens I want neither o' them. But gin I had yin o' them, she wad maybe keep the ither off."
So Cleaver's boy scratched his head to find out a way of settling the difficulty. He could, he thought, be indifferently happy with either. It was only having both of them "tearing at his coat-tails" that made him miserable.
At last he dashed his hand against his thigh with a cry of joy, and fell to dancing a hobnailed fandango in the gutter.
"Dod, man, the verra thing," he said; "I'll toss for them!"
So with that Cleaver's boy took out his lucky penny, and, selecting a smooth space of the unpaved roadway of a new street, where the coin would neither stick edgeways nor yet bounce unfairly on the stones, he spun the coin deftly upwards from his level thumb-nail.
"Heads Sall—tails Susy!" he said, very solemnly, for his life was in the twirl of the penny.
"Heads she is—Sal has got me!" exclaimed the ardent lover.
They were engaged that night. The next day they were photographed together—Sal with a very large hat, a great deal of hair, and a still larger amount of feather; Cleaver's boy with a very small hat, an immense check suit, and a pipe stuck at a knowing angle with the bowl turned down. That same night Sal had still a lover, indeed, but the glory of her betrothal attire was no more. Her hat was a mere trampled ruin. Her fringe was patchy. She had a black eye; and all that remained of Susy Murphy was in the lock-up for assault and battery. Without doubt it was a stirring time for James Annan, and it is to be feared that Mr. Cleaver and his customers did not get quite their fair share of his attention while it lasted.