ges?" says Mallory.

"Oh, tush!" says I. "And you let 'em hand you such a burry one? P. O.
privileges is the right to lick stamps at the gen'ral post-office, and
it's a gag them curb shysters has wore to a frazzle. You go back and
tell that fresh paper-chewer we're only buyin' options on July snow
removals preferred."

That's what comes of foolin' around at college. Mallory comes back
lookin' like some one had sold him a billboard seat to a free window
show.

But that was nothin' to the down-and-out slump I found him in next
night, when I goes around for my writin' lesson and so on.

"Is it the _spino comeandgetus_," says I, "or has Miss Tuttifrutti
sent back your Christmas card?"

"It's worse than either," says he, with his chin on the top button of
his vest. "I guess I'm what you would call a false alarm, Torchy. I've
been tried out and haven't made good."

"G'wan!" says I. "Everyone gets a lemon now and then. Some tries to
swaller it whole, and chokes to death; others mixes 'em up with eggs and
things, and knocks out a pie, with meringue on top. Draw us a map of how
you fell off the scaffold."

Well, I jollied the hard luck tale out of him. It was a case of sendin'
a boy with a pushcart to bring home a grand piano. The Old Man had done
it. He's kind of sore on the way Mr. Robert lugged Mallory in by the
hair, 'cause I heard him growlin' somethin' about makin' a kindergarten
out of the Corrugated; so he springs this on him. He calls for Mallory
and tells him there's a Russian gent down to the Waldorf that's come
over to place a big Gover'ment contract.

"We've got to have a slice of that," says he. "Just you run down and get
it for us." Like that, offhand, as if it was somethin' you could do
anytime between lunch and one-thirty.

Near as I could make out, Mallory goes for it in his polite, standoff,
after-you way, and the closest he gets to Russky is a minute with a
cocky secretary that says his Excellency is very sorry, but he'll be too
busy to see him this trip--maybe next time, about 1912, he'll have an
hour off.

"And then you backs up the alley?" says I.

"There was nothing else for me to do," says Mallory. "He went off
without giving me another chance."

"Say," says I, "if I had all your parlor manners, I'd organize an
English holdin' comp'ny for 'em, so's not to be jacked up for bein' a
monopoly. Why didn't you give him the low tackle and sit on his head
until he promised to behave? Was that the