n are such. Jake Berger just looked
around kindly and didn't open his head till near the end of the meal. I
thought he wasn't noticing anything at all till the orchestra put on a
shadow number with dim purple lights.

"You'll notice they do that," says Jake, "whenever a lot of these people
are ready to pay their checks. It saves fights, because no one can see
if they're added right or not." That was pretty gabby for Jake. Then I
listened again to Ben and his little pet. They was talking their way up
the Bowery from Atlantic Garden and over to Harry Hill's Place which,
it seemed the New Yorker didn't remember, and Ben then recalled an old
leper with gray whiskers and a skull cap that kept a drug store in
Bleecker Street when Ben was a kid and spent most of his time watering
down the sidewalk in front of his place with a hose so that ladies going
by would have to raise their skirts out of the wet. His eyes was quite
dim as he recalled these sacred boyhood memories.

The New Yorker had unbent a mite like he was going to see the mad
adventure through at all costs, though still plainly worried about the
dinner check. Ben now said that they two ought to found a New York club.
He said there was all other kinds of clubs here--Ohio clubs and Southern
clubs and Nebraska societies and Michigan circles and so on, that give
large dinners every year, so why shouldn't there be a New York club;
maybe they could scare up three or four others that was born here if
they advertised. It would of course be the smallest club in the city or
in the whole world for that matter. The New Yorker was kind of cold
toward this. It must of sounded like the scheme to get money out of him
that he'd been expecting all along. Then the waiter brought the check,
during another shadow number with red and purple lights, and this lad
pulled out a change purse and said in a feeble voice that he supposed we
was all paying share and share alike and would the waiter kindly figure
out what his share was. Ben didn't even hear him. He peeled a large
bill off a roll that made his new suit a bad fit in one place and he
left a five on the plate when the change come. The watchful New Yorker
now made his first full-hearted speech of the evening. He said that Ben
was foolish not to of added up the check to see if it was right, and
that half a dollar tip would of been ample for the waiter. Ben pretended
not to hear this either, and started again on the dear old times. I says