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er we had reached New York. A woman like Mrs. Waddesleigh Peagrim--a ghastly creature, my dear, all front teeth and exuberance, but richer than the Sub-Treasury--looks askance at a man, however agreeable, if he endeavours to cement a friendship begun on board ship from a cheap boarding-house on Amsterdam Avenue. It was imperative that I should find something in the nature of what I might call a suitable base of operations. Fortune played into my hands. One of the first men I met in New York was an old soldier-servant of mine, to whom I had been able to do some kindnesses in the old days. In fact--it shows how bread cast upon the waters returns to us after many days--it was with the assistance of a small loan from me that he was enabled to emigrate to America. Well, I met this man, and, after a short conversation, he revealed the fact that he was the hall-porter at that apartment-house which you visited, the one on Fifty-Seventh Street. At this time of the year, I knew, many wealthy people go south, to Florida and the Carolinas, and it occurred to me that there might be a vacant apartment in his building. There was. I took it." "But how on earth could you afford to pay for an apartment in a place like that?" Uncle Chris coughed. "I didn't say I paid for it. I said I took it. That is, as one might say, the point of my story. My old friend, grateful for favours received and wishing to do me a good turn, consented to become my accomplice in another--er--innocent deception. I gave my friends the address and telephone number of the apartment-house, living the while myself in surroundings of a somewhat humbler and less expensive character. I called every morning for letters. If anybody rang me up on the telephone, the admirable man answered in the capacity of my servant, took a message, and relayed it on to me at my boarding-house. If anybody called, he merely said that I was out. There wasn't a flaw in the whole scheme, my dear, and its chief merit was its beautiful simplicity." "Then what made you give it up? Conscience?" "Conscience never made me give up _anything_," said Uncle Chris firmly. "No, there were a hundred chances to one against anything going wrong, and it was the hundredth that happened. When you have been in New York longer, you will realize that one peculiarity of the place is that the working-classes are in a constant state of flux. On Monday you meet a plumber. Ah! you say, a plumber! Capital! On
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