order of boiled rice and milk with a hunk
of pumpkin pie on the side. And in spite of the beard he went to it
business-like and graceful.

"Excuse my askin'," says I, "but are you going or coming?"

He looks a bit blank at that. "I am Burmese gentleman," says he. "I am
named Sarrou Mollik kuhn Balla Ben."

"That's enough, such as it is," says I. "Suppose I use only the last of
it, the Balla Ben part?"

"No," says he, "that is only my title, as you say Honorable Sir."

"Oh, very well," says I, "Sour Milk it is. And maybe you're willin' to
tell how you get this way--great hunger and no rupees?"

He was willin'. It seems he'd first gone wanderin' from home a year or
so back with a sporty young Englishman who'd hired him as guide and
interpreter on a trip into the middle of Burmah. Then they'd gone on
into India and the Hon. Sour Milk had qualified so well as all round
valet that the young Englishman signed him up for a two-year jaunt
around the world. His boss was some hot sport, though, I take it, and
after a big spree coming over on a Pacific steamer from Japan he'd been
taken sick with some kind of fever, typhoid probably, and was makin' a
mad dash for home when he had to quit in New York and be carted to some
hospital. Just what hospital Sour Milk didn't know, and as the Hon.
Sahib was too sick to think about payin' his board in advance his valet
had been turned loose by an unsympathizing hotel manager. And here he
was.

"That sure is a hard luck tale," says I. "But it ought to be easy for a
man of your size to land some kind of a job these days. What did you
work at back in Burmah?"

"I was one of the attendants at the Temple," says he.

"Huh!" says I. "That does make it complicated. I'm afraid there ain't
much call for temple hands in this burg. Now if you could run a
button-holin' machine, or was a paper hanger, or could handle a delivery
truck, or could make good as a floor walker in the men's furnishin'
department, or had ever done any barberin'--Say! I've got it!" and I
gazes fascinated at that crop of facial herbage.

"I ask pardon?" says he, starin' puzzled.

"They're genuine, ain't they?" I goes on. "Don't hook over the ears with
a wire? The whiskers, I mean."

He assures me they grow on him.

"And you're game to tackle any light work with good pay?" I asks.

"I must not cause the death of dumb animals," says he, "or touch their
dead bodies. And I may not serve at the altars of your people. B