Tom, standing on the other side of the pavement, watched them with a painful fascination.
"Shall I go for once ?" he asked himself.

Then he strolled up to the playbill and read it.
As he was doing so some one slapped him on the shoulder, and, turning quickly round, he found himself face to face with his old acquaintance Gus Burke and another youth.
Gus, who was still small of stature, though fully nineteen years of age, was arrayed in the height of the fashion.

As Tom regarded him he felt his own coat become more shabby and his hat older, and he wished he had brought his dogskin gloves and cane.

Gus was smoking, too, a cigarette, and very distinguished and gentlemanly Tom thought it looked.

He felt, as he regarded his brilliant and unexpected acquaintance, that he was rather glad those people who were standing at the theatre door should see him accosted in so familiar a way by such a hero.