"You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh."
"I do sess precisely so, George. Does the name McQuiggan mean anything to you?"
"Don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, Doctah."
"You got away from St. Jo in time, then. Otherwise you might have met the McQuiggan family, and never been the same afterward."
"Ef you don' stop youah feet a-fidgittin', Boss," interpolated the neighboring bootblack, addressing the green-hatted man in aggrieved tones, "I cain't do no good wif this job."
"McQuiggan was the name," continued the volunteer biographer. "The best you could say of the McQuiggans, George, was that one wasn't much cusseder than the others, because he couldn't be. Human nature has its limitations, George."
"It suttinly have, suh."
"But if you had to allow a shade to any of 'em, it would probably have gone to the oldest brother, L.P. McQuiggan. Barring a scorpion I once sat down on while in swimming, he was the worst outrage upon the scheme of creation ever perpetrated by a short-sighted Providence."
"Get out of that chair!"
The little man had shot from his own and was dancing upon the pavement.