a large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each.”
I don’t care much about chinning with gold certificates. There’s a streak of yellow in ’em. All is not gold that’s quitters.
Old Jack certainly was a gilt-edged sport. When it came his time to loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary.
By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the wilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack’s money may have had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him; and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a few of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly octettes that the head waiters were ’phoning all over town for Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind of order.
At last we floated into an uptown café that I knew by heart. When the hod-carriers’ union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief goal kicker called out: Six—eleven—forty-two—nineteen—twelve” to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant Port Arthur or
[245]
