course is nothin' at all in keepin' up the home!" 

 "Well, you'll never have Rockefeller and that crowd gnashin' their teeth with all the dollars you'll get!" says Alex, "and that ain't no lie!" 

 "Now, boys," butts in the wife, "let's all be friends even if we do belong to the same family. What is it, Alex? Speak up like a man." 

 "Well," he says, "the Gaflooey people has started to make tourin' cars and roadsters! What d'ye think of that?" 

 "I'm simply dumfounded!" I says.  "Has Congress heard about this?" 

 "There you go again!" snorts Alex.  "Always tryin' to ridicule everything I do. It's simply a case of sour grapes with you—jealousy, that's all!" 

 "Sour grapes ain't jealousy," I says.  "Sour grapes is brandy. Go on with your story, Alex." 

 "Don't mind him," whispers the wife in his ear.  "He'd laugh in church!" 

 "Why not?" I says.  "I ain't done no gigglin' since you and me first went there together." 

 "Will you let go?" she says.  "Go on, Alex." 

 "Well," he says, "they called me into the president's office to-day, and the former begins by tellin' me I'm the best salesman they ever had." 

 "He don't care what he says, does he?" I butts in.  "I suppose you admitted the charge, eh?" 

 "After that," goes on Alex, snubbin' me, "he tells me they have decided to get into the pleasure car game, instead of just makin' trucks and the like. Their first offerin' is gonna be one of them chummy, clover-leaf roadsters which will hold five people comfortably." 

 "If they're well acquainted!" I says. 

 "Will you leave the boy alone?" asks the wife.  "I never saw anybody like you in my life!" 

 "Don't I know it?" I says.  "Otherwise, how would we ever of got married?" 

 "Now," goes on Alex, "they want me to go up and see Runyon Q. Sampson, the well-to-do millionaire, and get him to buy the first car. You can imagine what a terrible good advertisement that will be for us if he should buy it, can't you?" 

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