ut silk rugs on the floor and parlor furniture all over the shop. We
had dinner served up there, and it was a feed to dream about--oysters,
ruddy duck, filly of beef with mushrooms, and all the frills--while
Homer worries along on a few toasted crackers and a cup of weak tea.

As Leonidas and me does the anti-famine act Homer unloads his hard-luck
wheeze. He was the best example of an all-round invalid I ever stacked
up against. He didn't go in for no half-way business; it was neck or
nothing with him. He wasn't on the hospital list one day and bumping the
bumps the next. He was what you might call a consistent sufferer.

"It's my heart mostly," says he. "I think there's a leak in one of the
valves. The doctors lay it to nerves, some of them, but I'm certain
about the leak."

"Why not call in a plumber?" says I.

But you couldn't chirk him up that way. He'd believed in that leaky
heart of his for years. It was his stock in trade. As near as I could
make out he'd began being an invalid about the time he should have been
hunting a job, and he'd always had some one to back him up in it until
about two months before we met him. First it was his mother, and when
she gave out his old maid sister took her turn. Her name was Joyphena.
He told us all about her; how she used to fan him when he was hot, wrap
him up when he was cold, and read to him when she couldn't think of
anything else to do. But one day Joyphena was thoughtless enough to go
off somewhere and quit living. You could see that Homer wouldn't ever
quite forgive her for that.

It was when Homer tried to find a substitute for Joyphena that his
troubles began. He'd had all kinds of nurses, but the good ones wouldn't
stay and the bad ones he'd fired. He'd tried valets, too, but none of
'em seemed to suit. Then he got desperate and wrote out that ad. that
brought the mob down on him.

He gave us a diagram of exactly the kind of man he wanted, and from his
plans and specifications we figured out that what Homer was looking for
was a cross between a galley slave and a he-angel, some one who would
know just what he wanted before he did, and be ready to hand it out
whenever called for. And he was game to pay the price, whatever it might
be.

"You see," says Homer, "whenever I make the least exertion, or undergo
the slightest excitement, it aggravates the leak."

I'd seen lots who ducked all kinds of exertion, but mighty few with so
slick an excuse. It would have do