d mirror, and teasing Carl.

"Here, boy, come 'ere an' wipe off de whisky you spilled.... Come on,
you tissy-cat. Get on de job.... You look like Sunday-school Harry.
Mamma's little rosy-cheeked boy.... Some day I'm going to bust your
beezer. Gawd! it makes me sick to sit here and look at dose
goily-goily cheeks.... Come 'ere, Lizzie, an' wipe dis table again. On
de jump, daughter."

Carl held himself in. Hundreds of times he snarled to himself: "I
_won't_ hit him! I will make good on _this_ job, anyway." He created a
grin which he could affix easily.

Now he was leaving. He had proven that he could hold a job; had
answered the unspoken criticisms from Plato, from Chicago garages,
from the Great Riley Show. For the first time since he had deserted
college he had been able to write to his father, to answer the grim
carpenter's unspoken criticisms of the son who had given up his chance
for an "education." And proudly he had sent to his father a little
check. He had a beautiful new fifteen-dollar suit of blue serge at
home. In his pocket was his ticket--steerage by the P. R. R. line to
Colon--and he would be off for bluewater next noon. His feet danced
behind the bar as he filled schooners of beer and scraped off their
foam with a celluloid ruler. He saw himself in Panama, with a clean
man's job, talking to cosmopolitan engineers against a background of
green-and-scarlet jungle. And, oh yes, he was going to beat Petey
McGuff that evening, and get back much of the belligerent self-respect
which he had been drawing off into schooners with the beer.

Old Petey rolled in at two minutes past eleven, warmed his hands at
the gas-stove, poked disapprovingly at the pretzels on the free-lunch
counter, and bawled at Carl: "Hey, keep away from dat cash-register!
Wipe dem goilish tears away, will yuh, Agnes, and bring us a little
health-destroyer and a couple matches."

Carl brought a whisky cocktail.

"Where's de matches, you tissy-cat?"

Carl wiped his hands on his apron and beamed: "Well, so the old soak
is getting too fat and lazy to reach over on the bar and get his own!
You'll last quick now!"

"Aw, is dat so!... For de love of Mike, d'yuh mean to tell me Lizzie
is talking back? Whadda yuh know about dat! Whadda yuh know about dat!
You'll get sick on us here, foist t'ing we know. Where was yuh
hoited?"

Petey McGuff's smile was absolutely friendly. It made Carl hesitate,
but it had become one of the principles of cosm