After breakfast Mr. McQuirk spent fifteen minutes before the corrugated mirror, subjugating his hair and arranging his green-and-purple ascot with its amethyst tombstone pin—­eloquent of his chosen calling.

Since the strike had been called it was this particular striker’s habit to hie himself each morning to the corner saloon of Flaherty Brothers, and there establish himself upon the sidewalk, with one foot resting on the bootblack’s stand, observing the panorama of the street until the pace of time brought twelve o’clock and the dinner hour.  And Mr.  “Tiger” McQuirk, with his athletic seventy inches, well trained in sport and battle; his smooth, pale, solid, amiable face—­blue where the razor had travelled; his carefully considered clothes and air of capability, was himself a spectacle not displeasing to the eye.

But on this morning Mr. McQuirk did not hasten immediately to his post of leisure and observation.  Something unusual that he could not quite grasp was in the air.  Something disturbed his thoughts, ruffled his senses, made him at once languid, irritable, elated, dissastisfied and sportive.  He was no diagnostician, and he did not know that Lent was breaking up physiologically in his system.

Mrs. McQuirk had spoken of spring.  Sceptically Tiger looked about him for signs.  Few they were.  The organ-grinders were at work; but they were always precocious harbingers.  It was near enough spring for them to go penny-hunting when the skating ball dropped at the park.  In the milliners’ windows Easter hats, grave, gay and jubilant, blossomed.  There were green patches among the sidewalk debris of the grocers.  On a third-story window-sill the first elbow cushion of the season—­old gold stripes on a crimson ground—­supported the kimonoed arms of a pensive brunette.  The wind blew cold from the East River, but the sparrows were flying to the eaves with straws.  A second-hand store, combining foresight with faith, had set out an ice-chest and baseball goods.

And then “Tiger’s” eye, discrediting these signs, fell upon one that bore a bud of promise.  From a bright, new lithograph the head of Capricornus confronted him, betokening the forward and heady brew.

Mr. McQuirk entered the saloon and called for his glass of bock.  He threw his nickel on the bar, raised the glass, set it down without tasting it and strolled toward the door.

“Wot’s the matter, Lord Bolinbroke?” inquired the sarcastic bartender; “want a chiny vase or a gold-lined epergne to drink it out of—­hey?”

“Say,” said Mr. McQuirk, wheeling and shooting out a horizontal hand and a forty-five-degree chin, “you know your place only when it comes for givin’ titles.  I’ve changed me mind about drinkin—­see?  You got your money, ain’t you?  Wait till you get stung before you get the droop to your lip, will you?”

Thus Mr. Quirk added mutability of desires to the strange humors that had taken possession of him.