“Do you mean to say,” continued the irascible gentleman, “that you have never read the by-laws of the City of Toronto?”
“No, sir,” said the conductor.
“The ignorance of these fellows,” said the man in grey tweed, swinging his chair round again towards me. “We ought to have a by-law to compel them to read the by-laws. I must start an agitation for it at once.” Here he took out a little red notebook and wrote something in it, murmuring, “We need a new agitation anyway.”
Presently he shut the book up with a snap. I noticed that there was a sort of peculiar alacrity in everything he did.
“You, sir,” he said, “have, of course, read our municipal by-laws?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Splendid, aren’t they? They read like a romance.”
“You are most flattering to our city,” said the irascible gentleman with a bow. “Yet you, sir, I take it, are not from Toronto.”
“No,” I answered, as humbly as I could. “I’m from Montreal.”
“Ah!” said the gentleman, as he sat back and took a thorough look at me. “From Montreal? Are you drunk?”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t think so.”
“But you are suffering for a drink,” said my new acquaintance eagerly. “You need
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