Across the street was a drug store well lighted; sending forth gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.

Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.

“Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug ’tore for mamma. She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med’cin.”

“Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be doing errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?”

Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.

On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound.

“Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium chloride, ten grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I know all about the number of gallons of H₂O in the Croton reservoir, and I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.”

“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink, after he had compounded the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the regular price.”

“To gulls,” said Morley smilingly.

He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the eighty-five cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.

“Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said cheerfully, to his small victim.

Two street-cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then, from the corner of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile, cheap candy from the Italian’s fruit stand.

Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of inexpensive Château Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had come his way.

“Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with anyone. “It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what three divisions of people are easiest to overreach in transactions of all kinds?”

“Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from the dry goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten Island, and—”

“Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is just—men, women and children. The world—well, say New York and as far as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island—;it is full of greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, François.”

“If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, “Oi’ll—”

Morley lifted his hand in protest—slightly martyred protest.