“Uh—that was quite a—quite a picture—that train robbery. Wasn’t it.”
“Yuh, I guess—Now where’s the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn’t see it no more ’n—Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain’t he the cut-up, mister! Ain’t both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads, though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office. _Picture?_ I don’t get no chance to see any of ’em. Funny, ain’t it?—me barking for ’em like I was the grandmother of the guy that invented ’em, and not knowing whether the train robbery—Now who stole my going-home shoes?… Why, I don’t know whether the train did any robbing or not!”
He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk’s heart bounded in comradeship. He was surprised into declaring:
“Say—uh—I bowed to you the other night and you—well, honestly, you acted like you never saw me.”
“Well, well, now, and that’s what happens to me for being the dad of five kids and a she-girl and a tom-cat. Sure, I couldn’t ’ve seen you. Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares—I was probably thinking who was it et the lemon pie on me—was it Pete or Johnny, or shall I lick ’em both together, or just bite me wife.”
Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really considered biting his wife. _He_ knew! His nod and grin and “That’s the idea!” were urbanely sophisticated. He urged:
“Oh yes, I’m sure you didn’t intend to hand me the icy mitt. Say! I’m thirsty. Come on over to Moje’s and I’ll buy you a drink.”
He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had leaped, and the Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York corner saloon, which of course “glittered” with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his Cum-Fee-Best shoe.
“Uh-h-h-h-h,” said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now that—wealthy citizen though he had become—he was in danger of exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn’t choose his drink properly. “Stummick been hurting me. Guess I’d better just take a lemonade.”
“You’re the brother-in-law to a wise one,” commented the Brass-button Man. “Me, I ain’t never got the sense to do the traffic cop on the booze. The old woman she says to me, ‘Mory,’ she says, ‘if you was in heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the other,’ she says, ‘and you was to have your pick, which would you take?’ And what ’d yuh think I answers her?”