"
"I assure you that it was."
"Don't see it," said Klinker.
"That is not my responsibility, in any sense."
Thus Doctor Queed, sitting stiffly on his hard little chair, and gazing
with annoyance at Klinker through the iron bars at the foot of the bed.
"Blest if I pipe," said Buck, and scratched his head.
"I cannot both tell the stories and furnish the brains to appreciate
them. Kindly proceed with what you were telling me."
So Buck, obliging but mystified, dropped back upon the bed and
proceeded, tooth-pick energetically at work. His theme was a problem
with which nearly every city is unhappily familiar. In Buck's
terminology, it was identified as "The Centre Street mashers": those
pimply, weak-faced, bad-eyed young men who congregate at prominent
corners every afternoon, especially Saturdays, to smirk at the
working-girls, and to pass, wherever they could, from their murmured,
"Hello, Kiddo," and "Where you goin', baby?" to less innocent things.
Buck's air of leisureliness dropped from him as he talked; his
orange-stick worked ever more and more furiously; his honest voice grew
passionate as he described conditions as he knew them.
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