"Always was, my dear Bob," says Bunny placid. "You often told me as much."
"But I didn't think," goes on Mr. Robert, "you'd get as low as—as tonight—begging!"
"Quite respectable for me, I assure you," says Bunny. "Why, my dear fellow, during the last few years there's been hardly a crime on the calendar I shouldn't have committed for a dollar—barring murder, of course. That requires nerve. How long do you suppose the few thousands I got from Aunt Eunice lasted? Barely six months. I thought I knew how to live rather luxuriously myself. But Trixie! Well, she taught me. And we were in Paris, you know. I didn't cable the governor until I was down to my last hundred-franc note. His reply was something of a stinger. I showed it to Trixie. She just laughed and went out for a drive. She didn't come back. I hear she picked up a brewer's son at Monte Carlo. Lucky devil, he was!
"And I? What would you expect? In less than two weeks I was a stowaway on a French liner. They routed me out and set me to stoking. I couldn't stand that, of course; so they put me to work in the kitchens, cleaning pots, dumping garbage, waiting on the crew. I had to make the round trip too. Then I jumped the stinking craft, only to get a worse berth on a P. & O. liner. I worked with Chinese, Lascars, coolies, the scum of the earth; worked and ate and slept and fought with them. I crawled ashore and deserted in strange ports. I think it was at Aden where I came nearest to starving the first time. And I remember the docks at Alexandria. Sometimes the tourists threw down coppers for the Arab and Berber boys to scrabble for. It's a pleasant custom. I was there, in that scrabbling, cursing, clawing rabble. And when I'd had a good day I spent my coppers royally in a native dance-hall which even guides don't dare show to the trippers.
"Respectability, my dear Bob, is all a matter of comparison. I acquired a lot of new standards. As a second cabin steward on a Brazos liner I became quite haughty. Poverty! You don't know what it means until you've rubbed elbows with it in the Far East and the Far South. Here you have the Bowery Mission bread line. That's a fair sample, Bob, of our American opulence. Free bread!"
"So you've been in that, have you?" asks Mr. Robert.
"Have I?" says Bunny. "I've pals down there tonight who will wonder what has become of me."
Mr. Robert shudders. And, say, it made me feel chilly along the spine too.
"Well, what now?" says Mr. Robert. "I suppose you expect me to find you some sort of work?"
"Not at all," says Bunny. "Another of those cigarettes, if you don't mind. Excellent brand. Thanks. But work? How inconsiderate, Bob! I wasn't born to be useful. You know that well enough. No, work doesn't appeal to me."