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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Plooie has dropped his kit.... He's trying to salute.... It must be one of the Belgian officers.... Oh, Dominie!" "Well, what?" I demanded impatiently and cursed the recreant Mendel in my heart. "It can't be ... you don't think they can be arresting poor Plooie at this late day for evading service?" "Serve him right if they did," said I. "I believe they are.
They were, I was subsequently given to understand, the pick and flower of the city's reportorial genius. to His Majesty No; Plooie and Annie Oombrella need no help from the humble now. Their well-deserved fortune is made. The months go by bleak March and May-day heat Harvest is over winter well-nigh done And still I say, "To-morrow we shall meet."
Cyrus Staten had not been needed: the canaille would always respect a proper show of authority from its superiors; and so went home, rustling and sparkling. After all, Plooie was not much hurt. Perhaps more frightened than anything else. Panic was, in fact, the reason generally ascribed in Our Square for his quiet departure, with his Annie, of course, on the following Sunday.
Over in the far corner of the park an apparition moved into my visual range. It looked like Plooie. It moved like Plooie. It was loaded like Plooie. It opened a mouth like Plooie's and emitted again the familiar though diminished falsetto shriek. No doubt of it now; it was Plooie.
Humanly, however, they were convincing enough. Said Plooie: "Who will have a care of that little one if I have not?" Said Annie Oombrella: "He is so lonely!" So those two unfortunates united their misfortunes, and lo! happiness came of it. Luckily that is all that did come of it. What disposition the pair would have made of children, had any arrived, it is difficult to conjecture.
But the chase took him into the midst of a group of the younger and more boisterous element, returning from a business meeting of the Gentlemen's Sons of Avenue B, and before he could turn, they had surrounded him. "Here's our little 'ee-ro!" "Looka the Frenchy that won't fight!" "Safety first, hey, Plooie?" "Charge umbrellas backward, march!"
Within a few days Plooie reappeared and his strident falsetto appeal for trade rang shrill in the space of Our Square. Trouble developed at once. Small boys booed at him, called him "yellow," and advised him to go carefully, there was a German behind the next tree.
So I was rather cross, and it was well for my equanimity that the Bonnie Lassie, who had remained at home for reasons which are peculiarly her own affair and that of Cyrus the Gaunt, should have come over to my favorite bench to cheer me up. Said the Bonnie Lassie: "I wonder why Plooie didn't go to see his king." "Sense of shame," I suggested acidly.
"I told you there was something," she murmured triumphantly. "Hush!" said I. "I am glad to find that he had one true defender here," pursued the biographer of Plooie. "Though he could not fight in the ranks there was use for him. There was use for all true sons of Belgium in those black days. He was made driver of a a charette; I do not know if you have them in your great city?"
The basement cubbyhole remained vacant, with only the picture of Albert of the Kingdom of Sorrows in the window as a memento. Nothing further was seen or heard of Plooie. But Schepstein, wandering far afield in search of tenement sales a full year after, encountered Annie Oombrella washing down the steps of an office far over in Lewis Street, nearly to the river.
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