CHAPTER XVII
HOW HERMY PUT IT OVER
What do you know about luck, eh? Say, there was a time when I banked heavy on such things as four-leaf clovers, and the humpback touch, and dodgin’ ladders, and keepin’ my fingers crossed after gettin’ an X-ray stare. The longer I watch the game, though, the less I think of the luck proposition as a chart for explainin’ why some gets in on the ground floor, while others are dropped through the coal chute.
Now look at the latest returns on the career of my old grammar school chum, Snick Butters. Maybe you don’t remember my mentionin’ him before. Yes? No? It don’t matter. He’s the sporty young gent that’s mortgaged his memorial window to me so many times,—you know, the phony lamp he can do such stunts with.
He’s a smooth boy, Snick is,—too smooth, I used to tell him,—and always full of schemes for avoidin’ real work. For a year or so past he’s held the hot air chair on the front end of one of these sightseein’ chariots, cheerin’ the out of town buyers and wheat belt tourists with the flippest line of skyscraper statistics handed out through any megaphone in town. They tell me that when Snick would fix his fake eye on the sidewalk, and roll the good one up at the Metropolitan tower, he’d have his passengers so dizzy they’d grab one another to keep from fallin’ off the wagon.
Yes, I always did find Snick’s comp’ny entertainin’, and if it hadn’t been more or less expensive,—a visit always meanin’ a touch with him,—I expect I’d been better posted on what he was up to. As it is, I ain’t enjoyed the luxury of seein’ Snick for a good many months; when here the other afternoon, just as I was thinking of startin’ for home, the studio door opens, and in blows a couple of gents, one being a stranger, and the other this Mr. Butters.
Now, usually Snick’s a fancy dresser, no matter who he owes for it. He’ll quit eatin’ any time, or do the camel act, or even give up his cigarettes; but if the gents’ furnishing shops are showin’ something new in the line of violet socks or alligator skin vests, Snick’s got to sport the first ones sprung on Broadway.
So, seein’ him show up with fringes on his cuffs, a pair of runover tan shoes, and wearin’ his uniform cap off duty, I can’t help feelin’ some shocked, or wonderin’ how much more’n a five-spot I’ll be out by the time he leaves. It was some relief, though, to see that the glass eye was still in place, and know I wouldn’t be called on to redeem the ticket on that, anyway.