There gleamed a radiance from the crisp array before the mirror. Genius had hit Jimmie—hypnotic.
“Say, Tommie,” said he, “we will turn off som’ers. If you’ll go me on it we’ll take the old ambulance clear to the end of everything in sight this morning. There is more than forty thousand switches we’d oughter took long ago, and they can’t stop us. If we get our jobs excused away from us we c’n lean up against that five thousand until we are rested. Come along,” said he, inspiration working. “Come on, old man!”
“Say,” said the conductor, “I’ve got you faded. I don’t care if I never work again, and as for jerking a piece of common clothes-line every time a person with a mind to shoves one small nickel into my hand, why, I am really tired of it. I have had idees of a nobler life than this, Jimmie. They usually come after the sixth round, but when I think of that five thousand—” He stopped abruptly.
They grabbed each other and made for the yard.
“Come on, you fellers!” yelled the starter. “Get a wiggle on. Youse are due now.”
“Comin’, uncle!” said Jimmie, in a sharp falsetto.
“Slowly comin’!” boomed the conductor.
“Ain’t you got a gayness, though?” said the starter.
The motorman elaborately placed one silver dollar in the hands of the starter and closed the latter’s fingers upon it.
“Keep this,” he said, from many years’ experience of viewing the hero leaving the lady of his choice with a sob in the orchestra. “Keep this,” he repeated waveringly, quaveringly and tenderly. “Do the same by yourself. This is a sooveniret of something you never heard of before.”