chase yourself around the block for an hour or two till they kill a few million of them off. Go ahead, Nine!"
Don hesitated—said meekly, "Thanks"—and went out.
The roar of traffic greeted him with a new note of busy indifference. He stood on the lowest step of the entrance undecided which way to turn, until a messenger boy bumped him from behind, mischievously, and sent him into the current of passers-by. He was carried down the street to an eddy at the corner. There he took out his notes of "Help Wanted," oblivious to the "Pulish, sir? Pulish?" of a boot-black whose chairs were under the shelter of an awning beside him. He found the address of the business "concern" that needed a man to manage its shop; and having inquired the way of the insistent polisher, he set out again more soberly.
The business "concern" proved to be the basement workshop of a little foreigner, in varnish-stained apron and soiled shirt-sleeves, who renovated furniture and sold "antiques." He explained eagerly that he had invented and patented a new process of "tufting" upholstery, and he needed a man to push the patent for him while he was busy in the shop. He expatiated, in a confused but animated dialect, on the money-making possibilities of his machine, puffing out his cheeks and waving his hands. Of course, he would have to have a guarantee. . . . When Don, at last, understood that the needed "manager" was expected to put "fife hundered " dollars into the patent, he merely shook his head and left the man gesticulating.
