“An’ all summer nothin’ to do at all!” he mused. “Purdy soft! Purdy soft!”
He looked at Blynn proudly, as if the securing of such a sinecure was in itself a worthy act.
“I express for Hamilton’s,” he confided. “Furniture vans,” he added in answer to an inquiring look. “Some days we jess ‘move,’ but most times we hussels pianos. Y’back feels it nights, I tell y’. But, y’ sleeps good.”
“Ah!” Blynn said. “I envy you there. I don’t ‘sleep good’ at all. Half the night I lie awake thinking of foolish unnecessary things.”
“Y’ ain’t got no work to do!” the expressman spoke with emphasis. “It’ll give any man the bug-eye. What you want is a reg-u-lar job. What you’re a-doin’, that’s a woman’s business. Oh, I’ve tried my hand at cinches—grass cutting, drivin’ a wagon, takin’ the dog out walkin’. Made me sick. I got to put guts in my job. That’s what you need—a job y’ got to put guts in.”
As the talk grew confidential at parting he let the professor lend him five dollars without the shadow of a protest. There was nothing squeamish, self-conscious or over-modest about the expressman. “Sure!” he said and pocketed the bill without more ado. He treated Blynn so like an equal that the university man stalked off elated as if he had just been admitted to an exclusive fraternity.
It was through such wild adventures that Blynn graduated to a deed of daring. One cool, spring Saturday night found him strolling along the badly lighted streets of a section known as “The Ditch.” The swinging doors of an odorous “saloon,” backed by a glaring warm light, which made the dark street a shade dimmer, seemed to bid a “Welcome All!” He went in.
The faces of the lounging drinkers at the bar were worth many times the small admission fee, the price of a strangling glass of ginger ale. They were like characters in a modern Morality Play, Blynn thought, as he named them in order: “Simple,” thin nose, hanging lip and lack-lustre eye; “Low-brow,” a rogue by right of inheritance; “Toothless,” a boy with the face of a crone; “Evil,” selfish to the point of cruelty; “Braggart,” serious and self-contemplative; “Sloth,” simply fat.
Speech was gone to a mumble; cackles of laughter arose over nothing at all; futile drivel slavered from the chin.
“’S my treat—godda drink ’th me!” fumbled “Simple,” displaying a bill.