front of the platform. Thence he leaped to the
ballroom floor, and two minutes later he was safely on the sidewalk
with nothing to hinder his exit save a glancing kick from Ferdy
Rothman.

It was precisely eleven o'clock, the very shank of the evening, and
Milton fairly shuddered at the idea of going home, but what was he to
do? His credit at all of the pool parlours had been strained to the
utmost and he was absolutely penniless. For two minutes he surveyed the
empty street and, with a stretch and a yawn, he started off home.

Ten minutes later Mrs. Zwiebel recognized with a leaping heart his
footsteps on the areaway. She ran to the door and opened it.

"Loafer!" she cried. "Where was you?"

"Aw, what's the matter now?" Milton asked as he kissed her
perfunctorily. "It's only just eleven o'clock."

"Sure, I know," Mrs. Zwiebel said. "What you come home so early for?"

Again Milton yawned and stretched.

"I was to a racket what the I.O.M.A.'s run off," he said.

He rubbed the dust from his trouser leg where Ferdy Rothman's kick had
soiled it.

"Things was getting pretty slow," he concluded, "so I put on my hat and
come home."

* * * * *

Breakfast at the Zwiebels' was a solemn feast. Mr. Zwiebel usually
drank his coffee in silence, or in as much silence as was compatible
with an operation which, with Mr. Zwiebel, involved screening the
coffee through his moustache. It emerged all dripping from the coffee,
and Mr. Zwiebel was accustomed to cleansing it with his lower lip and
polishing it off with his table napkin. Eggs and toast followed, and,
unless Mrs. Zwiebel was especially vigilant, her husband went downtown
with fragments of the yolks clinging to his eyebrows, for Mr. Zwiebel
was a hearty eater and no great stickler for table manners.

To Milton, whose table manners were both easy and correct, the
primitive methods of his father were irritating.

"Get a sponge!" he exclaimed on the morning after his orchestral
experience, as Mr. Zwiebel absorbed his coffee in long, gurgling
inhalations.

"Yes, Milton," Mr. Zwiebel commented, replacing his cup in the saucer,
"maybe I ain't such a fine gentleman what you are, but I ain't no
loafer, neither, y'understand. When I was your age I didn't sit down
and eat my breakfast at nine o'clock. I didn't have it so easy."

"Aw, what yer kicking about?" Milton replied. "You don't let me do
nothing down at the store, anyway. A