"Well, the referee he gives the teams a talking to about keeping the nation-al game clean and free from disgrace. 'The first man,' he says, 'that forgets he's playing lacrosse and begins laying the hickory on anybody,' he says, ''ll get a good long penalty.'
"Then Alderman McWhirter takes a whirl at 'em; him with the spongy whiskers on each side of his face, and a jaw like the vestibul of a street car.
"Vestibool, is it? Where did ye learn French? You muster lived in Montreal.
"You never? Well, hold your hair on; hold your hair on. Kinder soured on your food, ain't yer? What d'ye eat for breakfast anyway? Malted soapsuds, chipped mule fritters, er any o' them fancy foods?
"Porridge! my, but you're away behind the times. Wake up, man, wake up, the fast express is tearin' down the track and——
"All right. I'll proceed. So McWhirter gives the bunch a spiel a mile long and would be going yet, but somebody calls out to him to dry up, an' he gets red in the face and dries up, and the game starts.
"For about one minute they played like Sunday school was a joy to them, and then the Easts bangs the ball into the net and the goal umpire he ups with his hand, meanin' a goal and——
"What's that? You know that means a goal, eh! Feeling pretty pert this morning, eh! Mebbe you'd like to go on an' tell the story to yourself.
"Oh! all right, all right. Well, anyway, up goes the goal umpire's hand for a goal, and down goes the umpire for the count, for Tip Doolen of the Stars cracks him a wallop on his brain factory you could hear a mile away. And all the Easts piles on to Tip and it took the police fifteen minutes to get 'em untied. And the police sergeant he says, it's Tip to the station, but the goal umpire wakes up and says he wouldn't lodge no complaint, for Tip and him's friendly, only would they please get a new goal umpire, he says, and they did.
"Then the police sergeant wouldn't let 'em go on playing till he'd had a little say, and you'd oughter heard it. He says, 'It looks to me like most er you fellers is spoilin' for a clubbin', and I'd hate,' he says, 'to disappoint you if that's the case. But I'm willing to stay on duty a few hours beyond me time,' he says, 'in order to please you.'