The lawyer looked at the check in the most detached fashion, called a man and handed him the slip of paper. The man seemed weary. He took the piece of paper, walked toward an actual safe, opened a drawer with a real key and pulled out from its secret hiding-place a bunch, or, as it seemed to Jimmie, a whole head, of that tender, crisp, succulent plant, the long green.
With a wet thumb the weary man shredded off a certain number of leaves, and, showing disgust of life in every feature, placed them on the lawyer’s desk. The lawyer eyed them glumly, wrapped them up with a practised hand, and shoved them to Jimmie.
“There you are, sir,” he said. “Anything else?”
“No,” said Jimmie dreamily. “No, nothing else.”
He turned away, bumped into the partition, begged its pardon most humbly; walked into a young woman who was approaching with a basketful of letters; distributed wisdom all over the office; got spoken to plainly; tried to help the young woman collect the flying sheets, and got spoken to still more sharply; slid down the first four steps outside, landed in the street in some fashion, and then galloped toward a sign indicative of a life-saving station.
After safely embarking on a schooner he retired to a corner and examined the ten promises of our government for twenty dollars per promise, at leisure. They were so. Boldly he slapped one upon the bar. Doubtfully the barkeeper opened his cash-drawer.
“No good,” thought Jimmie, thinking this an act of suspicion. But it was not.
“Say, young feller,” said the barkeeper, “it’s pretty early in the day to clean me out of change. Ain’t you got nothing smaller than that?”
From its lonesome abiding-place at the bottom of a pocket filled with tobacco-dust, Jimmie fished out a quarter—that one piece of Mr. Bryan’s philosophy which he had imagined to be all that stood between him and a joyless wait for pay-day.
“All right,” said he.