But there's no shakin' Mallory off. He's dug up a lot of kid school books for me, and I got 'em stowed away in the desk here, like this was P. S. 46, 'stead of the front office of the Corrugated Trust. And when I ain't takin' cards into the main squeezes, or answerin' fool questions over the 'phone, or chasin' out on errands for Piddie, I'm swallowin' chunks of information about the times when G. Wash. was buildin' forts in Harlem and makin' good for a continuous in front of the Subtreasury.
Course, it's a clean waste of time. Suppose I gets the run next week, could I win another head office boy job by spielin' off a mess of guff about a lot of dead ones? Nit, never! But Mallory's got the bug that it'll all come in handy to me sometime, and I'm doin' it just to keep him satisfied. We get together most every night in his room, and I has to cough up what I've got next to durin' the day. And say, when I've been soldierin', and try to run in a stiff bluff instead of the real goods, he looks as disappointed as if I'd done something real low down. So gen'rally I hits up the books when there's nothin' else doin'.
Mr. Robert's on. He comes in one mornin' and pipes off the 'rithmetic. "What's this, Torchy?" says he. "Studying?"
"Yep," says I. "When I went through Columbia College there wa'n't anybody there but the janitor; so I'm takin' a postprandial whirl at this number dope, and it's fierce."
"Whose idea?" says he.
"Mr. Mallory's," says I. "But I've laid it out flat to him that I draws the line at Greek. I'd never want to talk like them 23d-st. flower peddlers, not in a thousand years!"
Didn't tell you, did I, about Mallory's doin' the skyrocket act? After Mr. Robert gets next to the fact that Mallory's a two seasons' old football hero from his old college he yanks him out of that twelve-dollar-a-week filin' job and makes him a salaried gent, inside of two days.
"Which is something I owe chiefly to you, Torchy," says Mallory.
"Honk, honk!" says I. "Them's the kind of ideas that will get you run in for reckless thinkin'. You was winnin' all that when you did that sprint for goal your friend Dicky was tellin' about the other day. Now all you got to do is get up on your toes and make one or two touchdowns for old Corrugated."
"I know," says he; "but I'm afraid that in this game I'm outclassed."