mustard, and he's just squarin' off for a foodfest, when I squats down with two hunks of pie and all the cheese I could get at one grab.

"Hello, Algy!" says I. "Where's the charlotte russe and the cup of tea?"

"Beg pardon," says he; "were you speaking to me?"35

35

"Sure," says I. "You didn't think I was makin' that crack at the armchair, did you? Maybe we ain't been introduced; but we're on the same payroll."

"Oh, yes," says he, "I remember now. You're the—the——"

"Go on, say it," says I. "I don't mind if it is red, and I lets anybody call me Torchy that wants to, even Willies."

"Well, now, that's nice of you," says he, sidetrackin' a bite to look me over. Then he grins.

Say, it was that open face movement that made me suspicious maybe he wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the wrist. His springin' that grin was a hunch for me to hold the decision.

"How long you been keepin' Corrugated stocks from goin' below par?" says I.

That stuns him for a minute, and then a light breaks. He throws another grin. "Oh, about a year," he says.

"Chee!" says I. "And they ain't put you on the board of directors yet?"

"I've managed to keep off so far," says he.36

36

"Get a lift every quarter, though, I suppose?" says I.

"I'm getting the same salary I began with, if that's what you mean," says he, tacklin' another sandwich that had got past the meat inspectors.

"Yours must be fatter'n most of the Saturday prize packages they hand out in the general office, or you wouldn't have kept satisfied so long," says I.

He thinks that over for awhile, like it was a new proposition, and then he says, quiet and easy, "I'm not at all sure, you see, that I am satisfied."

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