“I’ve some business to talk over with you,” explained Joe, and they finally went into a little restaurant on Third Avenue.  The stuffy little place, warm and damp with the excluded rain, and odorous with sizzling lard and steaming coffee and boiling cabbage, was crowded with people, but Joe and Marty took a little table to themselves in the darkest corner.  They sat against the dirty rear wall, whose white paint was finger-marked, fly-specked, and food-spotted, and in which a shelf-aperture furnished the connection with the kitchen.  To this hole in the wall hurried the three waitresses, shrieking their orders above the din of many voices and the clatter and clash of plates and utensils.

“One ham—­and!”

A monstrous greasy cook peered forth, shoving out a plate of fried eggs and echoing huskily: 

“Ham—­and!”

“Corn-beef-an’-cabbage!” “One harf-an’-harf!” “Make a sunstroke on the hash!” and other pleasing chants of the noon.

“What’ll yer have?”

A thin and nervous young woman swooped between them and mopped off the sloppy, crumby table with her apron.

“What’s good?” asked Joe.

The waitress regarded Joe with half-shut eyes.

“You want veal cutlets.”

And she wafted the information to the cook.

“Well, Joe,” said the practical Briggs, unable to hold in his excitement any longer, “let’s get down to business.”

Joe leaned forward.

“I’m thinking of starting up the printery, Marty.”

Marty flushed, choked, and could hardly speak.

“I knew you would, Joe.”

“Yes,” Joe went on, “but I’m not going to go on with it.”

Marty spoke sharply: 

“Why not?”

“I’ll tell you later, Marty.”

“Not—­lost your nerve?  The fire?”

Joe laughed softly.

“Other reasons—­Marty.”

“Retire?” Marty’s appetite was spoiled.  He pushed the veal cutlet from him.  He was greatly agitated.  “Retire—­you?  I can see you doing nothing, blamed if I can’t.  Gettin’ sporty, Joe, in your old age, aren’t you?  You’ll be wearing one of these dress-suits next and a flasher in yer chest.  Huh!” he snorted, “you’d make a good one on the shelf!”

Joe laughed with joy.

“With my flunkies and my handmaids.  No, Marty, I’m going into another business.”

“What business?”

“Editing a magazine.”

“And what do you know about editing a magazine?”

“What do most of the editors know?” queried Joe.  “You don’t have to know anything.  Everybody’s editing magazines nowadays.”

“A magazine!” Marty was disgusted.  “You’re falling pretty low, Joe.  Why don’t you stick to an honest business?  Gosh! you’d make a queer fist editing a magazine!”

Joe was delighted.

“Well, there are reasons, Marty.”

“What reasons?”

So Joe in a shaking voice unfolded his philosophy, and as he did so Marty became dazed and aghast, gazing at his boss as if Joe had turned into some unthinkable zoological oddity.  Into Marty’s prim-set life, with its definite boundaries and unmysterious exactness, was poured a vapor of lunacy.  Finally Joe wound up with: