"No thanks," Jesse replied; and took from his own pocket a paper packet.
"A cigarette boy, eh? Well, let me tell you something, youngster. A hundred of those'll do you more harm than a barrel of these. Yessir! You take a fella smokes a mild cigar after his meal, why, when he's through with that cigar he's through—for awhile, anyway. He don't light another right away. But start to smoke a cigarette and first thing you know where's the package!"
Jesse appeared to consider this gravely. Ben Gartz leaned back supported by one hand, palm down, on the ground. His left was hooked in the arm-hole of his vest. One leg was extended stiffly in front of him, the other drawn up. He puffed at his cigar.
Lottie rose abruptly. "I'll clear these things away." She smiled at Jesse and Charley. "You two children go for a walk. I know you're dying to. I'll have everything slicked up in a jiffy."
"Oh, I think not," the two answered. They knew what was sporting and rigidly followed certain forms of conduct. Having eaten, they expected to pay. They scraped, cleared, folded, packed with the deftness of practiced picnickers. Jesse Dick's eye was caught by the name on the cover of a discarded pasteboard box.
"Oh, say! You got this stuff at father's."
"Yes; we stopped on the way——"
The boy tapped the cover of the box and grinned. "Best delicatessen in Chicago, Illinois, ladies and gents, if I say it as shouldn't. Dad certainly pickles a mean herring." His face sobered. "He's an artist in his line—father. Did you ever see one of his Saturday night windows? He'll have a great rugged mountain of Swiss cheese in the background, with foothills of Roquefort and Edam. Then there'll be a plateau of brown crackly roasted turkeys and chickens, and below this, like flowers in the valley, all the pimento and mayonnaise things, the salads, and lettuces and deviled eggs and stuffed tomatoes." (His poem "Delicatessen Window" is now included in the volume called "Roughneck.")
"I understand you're a poet," Ben Gartz remarked, quizzically. For him there was humour in the very word.
"Yes."