here I'll put you, unless it's the bowling alley,
but I guess that's your size. You oughtn't to get this way at your age."

He laughed a big, hearty laugh, same as I like to hear. "It's straight,"
he says. "I mean it. I want a job."

"But what for? You ain't short of cash?"

"You bet!" he says. "Strapped."

"Then," says I, "you come with me to-night and to-morrer morning you go
somewheres and sell them clothes you've got on. You'll make more out of
that than you will passing pie, if you passed it for a year."

He laughed again, but he said he was bound to be a waiter and if
I couldn't help him he'd have to hunt up the other portion of the
proprietor. So I told him to stay where he was, and I went off and found
Peter T. You'd ought to seen Peter stare when we hove in sight of the
candidate.

"Thunder!" says he. "Is this Exhibit One, Barzilla? Where'd you pick up
the Chinese giant?"

I done the polite, mentioning Brown's name, hesitating on t'other
chap's.

"Er-Jones," says the human lighthouse. "Er-yes; Jones."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jones," says Peter. "So you want to be a waiter,
do you? For how much per?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'll begin at the bottom, being a green hand. Twenty
a week or so; whatever you're accustomed to paying."

Brown choked. "The figure's all right," he says, "only it covers a month
down here."

"Right!" says Jones, not a bit shook up. "A month goes."

Peter stepped back and looked him over, beginning with the tan shoes and
ending with the whirligig hat.

"Jonesy," says he, finally, "you're on. Take him to the servants'
quarters, Wingate."

A little later, when I had the chance and had Brown alone, I says to
him:

"Peter," says I, "for the land sakes what did you hire the emperor for?
A blind man could see HE wa'n't no waiter. And we don't need him anyhow;
no more'n a cat needs three tails. Why--"

But he was back at me before I could wink. "Need him?" he says. "Why,
Barzilla, we need him more than the old Harry needs a conscience. Take
a bird's-eye view of him! Size him up! He puts all the rest of the
Greek statues ten miles in the shade. If I could only manage to get his
picture in the papers we'd have all the romantic old maids in Boston
down here inside of a week; and there's enough of THEM to keep one hotel
going till judgment. Need him? Whew!"

Next morning we was at the breakfast-table in my branch establishment,
me and Mabel and the five boarders. All hands was doing