"I'm on my way to my breakfast now," my neighbor said, after sizing me up with a second glance. "Why don't you come along? It's not much of a place to look at," he continued, as I followed him down-stairs, "but the grub isn't bad. Most of the places round here is punk."
Within ten minutes' time I found myself in a little eating-place that must once have been the cellar kitchen of a dwelling-house, sitting at a bare deal table, opposite a man I had never seen till that morning.
"Don't take bacon," he advised, when I had ordered bacon and eggs; "it 'll be punk. Take ham. Coffee 'll be punk, too. Better stick to tea."
Having given me these counsels, he proceeded with those short and simple annals of his history which I had already found to be the usual form of self-introduction. An Englishman, a Cornishman, he had been twenty years in America. He was married and had a family, but preferred to live in New York while he maintained his household in Chicago.
"Married life is punk," was his summing up. "Got the best little wife in the state of Illinois, and three fine kids, a boy and two girls—but I couldn't come it."
"Couldn't come what?"
"Oh, the whole bloomin' business—toein' the line like, bein' home at night, and the least little smell of anythink on your breath—"
A wave of his fork sketched a world of domestic embarrassment from which he had freed himself only by a somber insouciance. A somber insouciance might be called his key-note. Outwardly serious, ponderous, hard-working, and responsible, he was actually light-hearted and inconsequent. During the progress of the meal he recited the escapades of a Don Juan with the gravity of a Bunyan.
Still with my good-mixer air I asked:
"How does a guy like me get a job in New York?"