Not that I hit her so hard; but it was enough to spill the paper bundles she has piled up on one arm, and start 'em bouncin' down the iron steps. First comes a loaf of bread; next a bottle of pickles, that goes to the bad the third hop; and exhibit C was one of these ten-cent dishes of baked beans—the pale kind, that look like they'd floated in with the tide. Course, that dinky tin pan they was in don't land flat. It slips out of the bag as slick as if it was greased, stands up on edge, and rolls all the way down, distributin' the mess from top to bottom, as even as if it was laid on with a brush.
"My luncheon!" says she, in a reg'lar me-che-e-ild voice.
"Lunch!" says I. "That's what I'd call a spread. This one's on the house, but the next one will be on me. Will to-morrow do?"
"Ye-es," says she.
"Sorry," says I, "but I'm runnin' behind sched. now. What's the name, miss?"
"C. A. Belter, top floor," says she; "but don't mind about——"
"That'll be all right, too," says I, skippin' down over the broken glass and puntin' the five-cent white through the door for a goal.
It's little things like that, though, that keeps a man from forgettin' how he was brought up. I'm ready enough with some cheap jolly, but when it comes to throwin' in a "beg pardon" at the right place I'm a late comer. I thinks of 'em sometime next day.
Course, I tries to get even by orderin' a four-pound steak, with mushroom trimmin's, sent around from the hotel on the corner; but I couldn't get over thinkin' how disappointed she looked when she saw that pan of beans doin' the pinwheel act. I know I've seen the time when a plate of pork-and in my fist would have been worth all the turkey futures you could stack in a barn, and maybe it was that way with her.
Anyway, she didn't die of it, for a couple of days later she knocks easy on the Studio door and gets her head in far enough to say how nice it was of me to send her that lovely steak.