than he knows how to
spend, and you can figure out how surprised I am to see that down and out
look on his face. Course, I thinks something serious has been happenin'
to him, and I treats him real gentle.

"Hello, Mr. Jarvis!" says I. "Somebody been throwin' the hooks into you,
have they?"

"Oh, no," says he. "No, I--I'm all right."

"That's good," says I. "Dropped in to let me hand you a few vibrations
with the mitts?"

"No, thank you, Shorty," says he, fingerin' a chair-back sort of
hesitatin', as if he didn't know whether to sit down or stand up. "That
is--er--I think I don't care for a bout to-day. I--I'm hardly in the
mood, you see."

"Just as you say," says I. "Have a seat, anyway. Sure! That one; it's
reserved for you. Maybe you come in to enjoy some of my polite and
refined conversation?"

"Why--er--the fact is, Shorty," says he, fixin' his tie kind of nervous,
"I--I don't know just why I did come in. I think I started for the club,
and as I was passing by in a cab I looked up here at your
windows--and--and----"

"Of course," says I, soothin'. "What's the use goin' to the club when the
Physical Culture Studio is handier? You're feelin' fine as silk; how're
you lookin'?"

"Eh? Beg pardon?" says he, gettin' twisted up on that mothy gag. "Oh, I
see! I'm looking rotten, thank you, and feeling the same."

"G'wan!" says I. "You ain't got any license to have feelin's like that.
Guess you got the symptoms mixed. But where do you think it hurts most?"

Well, it takes five or ten minutes of jollyin' like that to pull any
details at all out of Jarvis, and when I does get the whole heartrendin'
story, I hardly knows whether to give him the laugh, or to send out for a
nursin' bottle.

Ever seen a great, grown man play the baby act? Talk about a woman in a
cryin' spell! That ain't a marker to watchin' a six-foot, one hundred and
eighty-pound free citizen droop his mouth corners and slump his shoulders
over nothin' at all. Course, I don't always feel like a hickey boy
myself, and I'll admit there are times when the rosy tints get a little
clouded up; but I has my own way of workin' out of such spells before the
mullygrubs turns my gray matter into curdled milk. But Jarvis, he's as
blue as a rainy Monday with the wash all in soak.

In the first place, he's been alone for nearly three whole weeks, the
women folks all bein' abroad, and it's a new experience for him. Think of
that awful calamity happenin' to a man