crunching.     

       The train smelt of new uniforms on which the sweat had dried, and of the smoke of cheap cigarettes. Fuselli awoke with a start. He had been asleep with his head on Bill Grey's shoulder. It was already broad daylight. The train was jolting slowly over cross-tracks in some dismal suburb, full of long soot-smeared warehouses and endless rows of freight cars, beyond which lay brown marshland and slate-grey stretches of water.     

       “God! that must be the Atlantic Ocean,” cried Fuselli in excitement.     

       “Ain't yer never seen it before? That's the Perth River,” said Bill Grey scornfully.     

       “No, I come from the Coast.”      

       They stuck their heads out of the window side by side so that their cheeks touched.     

       “Gee, there's some skirts,” said Bill Grey. The train jolted to a stop. Two untidy red-haired girls were standing beside the track waving their hands.     

       “Give us a kiss,” cried Bill Grey.     

       “Sure,” said a girl,—“anythin' fer one of our boys.”      

       She stood on tiptoe and Grey leaned far out of the window, just managing to reach the girl's forehead.     

       Fuselli felt a flush of desire all over him.     

       “Hol' onter my belt,” he said. “I'll kiss her right.”      

       He leaned far out, and, throwing his arms around the girl's pink gingham shoulders, lifted her off the ground and kissed her furiously on the lips.     

       “Lemme go, lemme go,” cried the girl. Men leaning out of the other windows of the car cheered and shouted.     

       Fuselli kissed her again and then dropped her.     

       “Ye're too rough, damn ye,” said the girl angrily.     

       A man from one of the windows yelled, “I'll go an' tell mommer”; and everybody laughed. The train moved on. Fuselli looked about him proudly. The image of Mabe giving him the five-pound box of candy rose a moment in his mind.     

      

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