“What’s biting your friend?” queried the flit, projecting an interested face into the dialogue. The stranger accepted the interrogation in the spirit of metaphor in which it was offered. “Woman,” he stated succinctly. “If you should happen to encounter six-foot two of correctly attired manhood baying the moon on a street corner, that is him. Or, if not him, he. Be kind to him, address him as Reuben Renssalaer Watts, and play him your little anvil chorus. It might cheer him up. I return to my martyrdom.” He saluted and retired. In deference to the manager’s entreaty, the tank backed out discreetly, making hardly more commotion than the average railway collision, and retired along Forty-fourth Street toward the Avenue. It roused a corpulent and fluffy dog, lolling richly in a waiting motor-car, who leaped out through the window with terrifying growls, and undertook to harry it, performing just in front of the left caterpillar that progressive three-legged canine dance familiar to all motorists. But a tank is not a motor-car. The fluffy dog conceived a misplaced contempt for its speed. He loitered on the way. There was a surprised and pained exclamation in the canine language, and the fluffy dog, ceasing to exist in the customary three dimensions, passed to the fourth, leaving as a souvenir only the first and second--to wit, length and breadth--upon the asphalt. He that so lately had been a beribboned and pampered darling was now as the shadow of a dream, a breath upon glass, a highly impressionistic silhouette limned against the unsympathetic pavement, above which a fat blond lady tore her costly hair, uttering tragic and vengeful cries. Hastily checking the juggernaut, the flit descended, and was promptly addressed as a murderer by the blond lady. The gob came to the rescue, and learned something to his disadvantage and that of his parentage. Then the sike tactlessly offered his hard-wrung four dollars in reparation. Him she smote upon the ear with violence, and after one ineffectual attempt to scrape Pettie from the bosom of Mother Earth retired, wailing, to her car, where she ordered the chauffeur to take her to her lawyer. “And to think,” murmured the sike, tenderly caressing the spot where the assault had taken place, “that next month I’ll be instilling moral precepts into the minds of the rising generation. Such is life!” “This is where we oil up,” announced the flit, and, having herded his passengers in, went at it. The delay was untimely. Hardly had the tank, refreshed and lubricated, resumed its way, when above the uproar was heard a sharp “ping!” It was twice repeated. “Somebody applying for admittance,” surmised the sike, in a well-attuned howl. The gob applied his eye to a rear peep-hole. “It’s one of those side-street cops; the bad ones our friend down the Avenue told us about. He’s shooting at us.”