t he never said anything like that. Come to think of it, he
never said anything much at all. He just thought a heap without opening
his face.

So young Andy went off to college, and I said to him, 'Now then, you
young devil, you be a credit to us, or I'll fetch you a clip when you
come home.' And Katie said, 'Oh, Andy, I _shall_ miss you.' And
Andy didn't say nothing to me, and he didn't say nothing to Katie, but
he gave her a look, and later in the day I found her crying, and she
said she'd got toothache, and I went round the corner to the chemist's
and brought her something for it.

It was in the middle of Andy's second year at college that the old man
had the stroke which put him out of business. He went down under it as
if he'd been hit with an axe, and the doctor tells him he'll never be
able to leave his bed again.

So they sent for Andy, and he quit his college, and come back to London
to look after the restaurant.

I was sorry for the kid. I told him so in a fatherly kind of way. And
he just looked at me and says, 'Thanks very much, Henry.'

'What must be must be,' I says. 'Maybe, it's all for the best. Maybe
it's better you're here than in among all those young devils in your
Oxford school what might be leading you astray.'

'If you would think less of me and more of your work, Henry,' he says,
'perhaps that gentleman over there wouldn't have to shout sixteen times
for the waiter.'

Which, on looking into it, I found to be the case, and he went away
without giving me no tip, which shows what you lose in a hard world by
being sympathetic.

I'm bound to say that young Andy showed us all jolly quick that he
hadn't come home just to be an ornament about the place. There was
exactly one boss in the restaurant, and it was him. It come a little
hard at first to have to be respectful to a kid whose head you had
spent many a happy hour clumping for his own good in the past; but he
pretty soon showed me I could do it if I tried, and I done it. As for
Jules and the two young fellers that had been taken on to help me owing
to increase of business, they would jump through hoops and roll over if
he just looked at them. He was a boy who liked his own way, was Andy,
and, believe me, at MacFarland's Restaurant he got it.

And then, when things had settled down into a steady jog, Katie took
the bit in her teeth.

She done it quite quiet and unexpected one afternoon when there was
only me and her and Andy in the plac