keeping, who has gone deep
enough into it to bring in wood or light a lamp, ought to know that the
upper story of a double boiler is not the thing to fry eggs in. How any
man with the faintest glimmering of a suspicion that he can cook an egg
should hit upon a tool as unhandy as that, is beyond me. A double boiler
is a telescopic arrangement used by first-class cooks for boiled
puddings. I understand that they prefer them because the raisins do not
get frightened and all huddled up at the bottom trying to escape, like
they do if boiled in the New England fashion in a towel. Jim Hosley knew
nothing of this, never having read the _Gentleman's Home Journal_ to any
extent. One night when I came in--one of the big nights in our history,
all right--I found him frying two eggs with this back-handed device. Of
course it made no difference to me if he fried them right on the coals
and lost everything except the fun of doing it; at the same time I felt
called upon to point out the skillet as the appropriate kitchen
furniture for the occasion. It was certainly a peculiar notion and
hinted to me that another woman had arrived and would soon be everywhere
in that flat.

"Jim, you don't know enough about frying eggs," said I, "to deserve them
at six for a quarter. You ought to eat canned goods or something you
can't damage by fire."

"This thing suits me better than your flat pan," said he. "You see how I
can take off the lid and jam it right down on the coals and have it all
over while you are waiting to warm up on top. Never used to cook eggs up
home--always sucked them; down here, been pulling at this pipe so long,
or eating brass goods in the restaurants, I seem to have lost the liking
for them. Tried them when up there last summer, but it warn't no use;
they didn't taste the same."

"Same with me," I sadly admitted, with my mind on the girl. "There
didn't seem to be enough nicotine in them to suit."

"Ben, chase yourself and find the pepper and salt, and be good enough to
tell me whose funeral it is down-stairs to-night," interrupted Jim,
changing the subject.

"I didn't know there was one," said I. "How far down is it?"

"One flight."

"Think of that," said I. "When the world gets crowded it seems to grow
careless and unneighborly. We don't either of us know who lives there,
and here we have been coming and going for about three years in this
place. Still, we are only here nights. Yet it's a strange world. Think
of liv