Cleaver's boy took one in his hand and opened the door. Then he swung the heavy can, and tilting it up with the other hand, he arched the contents solidly and impartially upon the waiting Juliets. Returning, he seized the other, and from the shrieking down the passage it was obvious to Celie, that he had been equally successful in cooling the ardour of the rivals with that. Cleaver's boy came back with the empty cans in his hand, panting a little as with honest toil, but there was no shamefacedness in his eyes now. He looked straight at Celie like a man who has done his full duty, and perhaps a little over. "I pit it to yoursel', Miss Celie, can a man do mair than that?" And with no further word, Cleaver's boy dusted the drops from the knees of his breeches, and sat down to write six more lines of "Kindness to dumb animals is a sign of nobility of character." But next night he came to Celie in the blackness of despair. "I will hae to resign, after all, Miss Celie," he said, "I canna bide here to be a disgrace to ye a'." "Why, what's the matter, James?" said Miss Tennant, who did not yet know everything; "are the girls going to prosecute you in the police court for throwing the water over them last night?" Cleaver's boy opened his mouth in astonishment and kept it so for some time. "Prosecute me?—I wish to peace they wad!" cried he, after he got his breath. "Na, faith, Miss Celie; will ye believe me, they are fonder o' me than ever. They were baith waitin' for me at the stairfit this mornin' when I cam doon to gang to the shop." And Miss Celie again believed him. 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.