“The service ain’t quite up to Louis Martin’s, that’s a fact,” says I; “but then, there’s no extra charge for the butter and toothpicks.”

We tried the dairy lunch next time; but he don’t like that much better.  Pushin’ up to the coffee urn with the mob, and havin’ a tongue sandwich slammed down in front of him by a grub hustler that hadn’t been to a manicure lately was only a couple of the details Mortimer shies at.

“Ah, you’ll soon get to overlook little things like that,” says I.

Mortimer shakes his head positive.  “It’s the disgusting crowd one has to mingle with,” says he.  “Such a cheap lot of—­of roughnecks!”

“Huh!” says I.  “Lots of ’em are pullin’ down more’n you or me.  Some of ’em are almost human too.”

“I don’t care,” says he.  “I dislike to mix with them.  It’s bad enough at the boarding house.”

“None of the aristocracy there, either?” says I.

“They’re freaks, all of them,” says he.  “What do you think—­one fellow wears an outing shirt in to dinner!  Then there’s an old person with gray whiskers who—­well, I can’t bear to watch him.  The others are almost as bad.”

“When you get to know the bunch you won’t mind,” says I.

“But I don’t care to know them,” says Mortimer.  “I haven’t spoken to a soul, and don’t intend to.  They’re not my kind, you see.”

“Are you boastin’, or complainin’?” says I.  “Anyway, you’re in for a lonesome time.  What do you do evenin’s?”

“Walk around until I’m tired, that’s all,” says he.

“That’s excitin’—­I don’t think,” says I.

Next he branches off on Miller, and starts tellin’ me what a deep and lastin’ grouch he’d accumulated against his boss.  But I ain’t encouragin’ any hammer play of that kind.

“Stow it, Morty,” says I.  “I’m wise to all that.  Besides, you ought to know you can’t hold a job and come floatin’ in at any old hour.  No wonder you got in Dutch with him!  Say, is this your first stab at real work?”

He admits that it is, and when I gets him to describe how he’s been killin’ time when he wa’n’t in college it develops that one of his principal playthings has been a six-cylinder roadster,—­mile-a-minute brand, mostly engine and gastank, with just space enough left for the driver to snuggle in among the levers on the small of his back.

“I’ve had her up to sixty-five an hour on some of those Rhode Island oiled stretches,” says Mortimer.

“I expect,” says I.  “And what was it you hit last?”

“Eh?” says he.  “Oh, I see!  A milk wagon.  Rather stiff damages they got out of us, with the hospital and doctor’s bills and all that.  But it was more the way I was roasted by the blamed newspapers that made Father so sore.  Then my being canned from college soon after—­well, that finished it.  So he sends Mother and Sis off to Europe, goes on a business trip to California himself, closes the house, and chucks me into this job.”