"Things was getting pretty slow," he concluded, "so I put on my hat and come home."
Breakfast at the Zwiebels' was a solemn feast. Mr. Zwiebel usually drank his coffee in silence, or in as much silence as was compatible with an operation which, with Mr. Zwiebel, involved screening the coffee through his moustache. It emerged all dripping from the coffee, and Mr. Zwiebel was accustomed to cleansing it with his lower lip and polishing it off with his table napkin. Eggs and toast followed, and, unless Mrs. Zwiebel was especially vigilant, her husband went downtown with fragments of the yolks clinging to his eyebrows, for Mr. Zwiebel was a hearty eater and no great stickler for table manners.
To Milton, whose table manners were both easy and correct, the primitive methods of his father were irritating.
"Get a sponge!" he exclaimed on the morning after his orchestral experience, as Mr. Zwiebel absorbed his coffee in long, gurgling inhalations.
"Yes, Milton," Mr. Zwiebel commented, replacing his cup in the saucer, "maybe I ain't such a fine gentleman what you are, but I ain't no loafer, neither, y'understand. When I was your age I didn't sit down and eat my breakfast at nine o'clock. I didn't have it so easy."
"Aw, what yer kicking about?" Milton replied. "You don't let me do nothing down at the store, anyway. All I got to do is sit around. Why don't you send me out on the road and give me a show?"
"A show I would give you," Zwiebel cried. "You mean a picnic, not a show. No, Milton, I got some pretty good customers already, but I wouldn't take no such liberties with 'em as sending out a lowlife like you to sell 'em goods."
"All right," Milton said, and relapsed into a sulky silence.
"Lookyhere, Milton," Zwiebel commenced. "If I thought you was really willing to work, y'understand, I would get you a good job. But with a feller what's all the time fooling away his time, what's the use?"