He received no encouragement. Robin was now engaged with a hammer and chisel in cutting a sort of touch-line all round the encampment, while Dicky did not cease manfully to delve with the pick-axe in the pit which he had digged for himself. For a long time they turned a deaf ear to the anxious inquiries of their interlocutor. But there are limits to long-suffering. Coaldust's witticisms increased with his audience, and at last Dicky turned to Robin and cried, with a really admirable maintenance of character and accent-- "'Ere, Scotty, come and give this bloke one in the neck. 'E's askin' for it!" Robin deliberately suspended operations, rose heavily to his feet, and cleared his throat. Then he turned upon the alcoholic Coaldust. I strained my ears. Surely _he_ was not going to talk Cockney! Far from it. He stuck to his last. "See here, ma man," he roared, in a voice that made the crowd jump, "are ye for a ding on the side o' the heid?" Coaldust capitulated with alacrity. "No offence, 'Orace!" he remarked genially. "You an' me was always pals. Put it there!" He extended an ebony hand, which Robin solemnly shook and returned to his work. Whatever my three friends were up to, it is possible that they might now have been left in peace for some time; for the crowd, seeing no chance of further sport from Coaldust, began to melt away. But a fresh character entered the scene to keep alive the nagging interest of the drama. My first intimation that something new was afoot came from an errand-boy on the edge of the crowd, who, addressing a lady or ladies unseen, suddenly expressed a desire to be chased. All heads were now turned down the street, and there, approaching with rather faltering steps, carrying a red cotton bundle and a tea-can, I beheld--one of my sisters-in-law! Postulating Dicky, I presumed it was Dilly, and I began to piece together in my mind the plot of this elaborate comedy. Evidently Dicky, Robin, and Gerald had decided--for a bet, or because they were dared, or possibly with a view to giving Champion's Bill a leg-up by a practical demonstration of the crying need for it--to dress themselves up as workmen and come and "do a turn," as they say in the music halls, to the discomfort of his Majesty's lieges and the congestion of traffic, upon some sufficiently busy thoroughfare for a stated period of time. Certainly they were doing it rather well. They were admirably made up,--Dicky was a past-master at that sort of thing,--and their operations so far had been sufficiently like the genuine article to impose upon the public in general,--if we except Champion and Coaldust,--even to the point of securing the assistance of the traffic-directing policeman.