ng?"

But when the paper is out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about
the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies
around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can,
and seems to enjoy it.

One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we poured about a spoonful of
whisky in it, and stirred it up. The cockroach came out to breakfast,
and we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the meal any more than
the cockroach did. It seemed as though he couldn't get enough paste.
Pretty soon he put one hand to his head and looked crosseyed. He tried
to climb down off the paste-dish, and fell over himself and turned
a flip-flap on the blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of
mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: "You think you are
smart, don't you, old baldy?"

Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in meditation, and staggered
off into a drawer, coming out presently with his arm around another
cockroach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and _he_ filled up, too,
and then they locked arms and paraded up and down on the green cloth of
the desk, as though singing, "We won't go home till morning," and they
kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good deal like politicians after
a caucus.

Finally, some remark was made by one of them that didn't suit, and they
pitched in and had the worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed
off as if after a policeman, and the other, staggered into his hole, and
we saw no more of our cockroach till the next morning, when he came
out with one hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and after
smelling of the paste and looking sick, he walked off to a bottle of
seltzer water and crawled up to the cork and looked around with an
expression so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him in, and he
drank as though he had been eating codfish. Since that day he looks at
us a little suspicious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he
goes and gets another cockroach to eat some of it first, and he watches
the effect.

Now, you wouldn't believe it, but that cockroach can tell, the minute he
sees a man, whether the man has come in with a bill, or has come in to
pay money. We don't know how he does it, but when a man has a bill the
cockroach begins to look solemn and mournful, and puts his hands to his
eyes as though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, the cockroach
looks glad, a smile plays around his mout