to look me
over. Then he grins.

Say, it was that open face movement that made me suspicious maybe he
wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the
points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato
dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie
boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the
wrist. His springin' that grin was a hunch for me to hold the decision.

"How long you been keepin' Corrugated stocks from goin' below par?" says
I.

That stuns him for a minute, and then a light breaks. He throws another
grin. "Oh, about a year," he says.

"Chee!" says I. "And they ain't put you on the board of directors yet?"

"I've managed to keep off so far," says he.

"Get a lift every quarter, though, I suppose?" says I.

"I'm getting the same salary I began with, if that's what you mean,"
says he, tacklin' another sandwich that had got past the meat
inspectors.

"Yours must be fatter'n most of the Saturday prize packages they hand
out in the general office, or you wouldn't have kept satisfied so long,"
says I.

He thinks that over for awhile, like it was a new proposition, and then
he says, quiet and easy, "I'm not at all sure, you see, that I am
satisfied."

"Why not chuck it then and make another grab?" says I. "It's good luck
sometimes to shake the bag."

He swings his shoulders up at that,--and say, he's got a good pair, all
right!--but he don't say a word.

"Ain't married the job, have you?" says I. "Or have you lost your
nerve?"

"Perhaps it's a lack of nerve, as you suggest," says he, more as if he
was talkin' to himself than anything else.

"Don't think you could connect with another, eh?" says I.

He shakes his head. "I'm not exactly proud of the fact," says he; "but I
don't mind telling you in confidence that it required the combined
efforts of my entire family and all my friends to get me into this job."

"Honest?" says I. "Chee! They picked a pippin for you, didn't they?"

"It's a star," says he.

"So's a swift kick from the bottom of a well," says I.

With that I shakes off the pie crumbs and takes a chase up around the
Flatiron, to watch the kids collectin' cigar coupons and take a look at
the folks from the goshfry-mighty belt shiverin' in the rubberneck
buggies. Say, I never feel quite so much to home in this burg as when I
watch them jays from the one-night stands payin' their coin to see
thin