As he started to go out he found the ticket-taker changing his long light-blue robe of state for a highly commonplace sack-coat without brass buttons.  In his astonishment at seeing how a Highness could be transformed into an every-day man, Mr. Wrenn stopped, and, having stopped, spoke: 

“Uh—­that was quite a—­quite a picture—­that train robbery.  Wasn’t it.”

“Yuh, I guess—­Now where’s the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat?  Them guys is always swiping it.  Picture, mister?  Why, I didn’t see it no more ’n—­Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat?  Ain’t he the cut-up, mister!  Ain’t both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads, though!  Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office. Picture? I don’t get no chance to see any of ’em.  Funny, ain’t it?—­me barking for ’em like I was the grandmother of the guy that invented ’em, and not knowing whether the train robbery—­Now who stole my going-home shoes?...  Why, I don’t know whether the train did any robbing or not!”

He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk’s heart bounded in comradeship.  He was surprised into declaring: 

“Say—­uh—­I bowed to you the other night and you—­well, honestly, you acted like you never saw me.”

“Well, well, now, and that’s what happens to me for being the dad of five kids and a she-girl and a tom-cat.  Sure, I couldn’t ’ve seen you.  Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares—­I was probably thinking who was it et the lemon pie on me—­was it Pete or Johnny, or shall I lick ’em both together, or just bite me wife.”

Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really considered biting his wife. He knew!  His nod and grin and “That’s the idea!” were urbanely sophisticated.  He urged: 

“Oh yes, I’m sure you didn’t intend to hand me the icy mitt.  Say!  I’m thirsty.  Come on over to Moje’s and I’ll buy you a drink.”

He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had leaped, and the Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York corner saloon, which of course “glittered” with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his Cum-Fee-Best shoe.

“Uh?” said the bartender.

“Rye, Jimmy,” said the Brass-button Man.

“Uh-h-h-h-h,” said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now that—­wealthy citizen though he had become—­he was in danger of exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn’t choose his drink properly.  “Stummick been hurting me.  Guess I’d better just take a lemonade.”

“You’re the brother-in-law to a wise one,” commented the Brass-button Man.  “Me, I ain’t never got the sense to do the traffic cop on the booze.  The old woman she says to me, `Mory,’ she says, `if you was in heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the other,’ she says, `and you was to have your pick, which would you take?’ And what ’d yuh think I answers her?”