"I don't quite see," said Mr. Brief, "just how you are going to work your scheme, Mr. Idiot. I must confess I should regard Bill as a pretty tough proposition."
"Not at all," said the Idiot. "The only trouble with Bill is that he hasn't found himself yet. He's probably one of those easy-going, popular youngsters who've devoted their college days to growing. Just at present he's got more vitality than brains. I imagine from his answer to the Doctor that he is a good-natured hulks who could get anything he wanted in college except a scholarship. I haven't any doubt that he was beloved of all his classmates and was known to his fellows as Old Hoss, or Beefy Bill or Blue-eyed Billie and could play any game from Muggins to Pit like a hero of a Bret Harte romance."
"You've sized Bill up all right," said the Doctor. "He is just that, but he has brains. The only trouble is he's been saving them up for a rainy day and now when the showers are beginning he doesn't know how to use 'em. How would you go about getting him a job, Mr. Idiot?"
"Bill ought to go into the publishing business," said the Idiot. "He was cut out for a book-agent. He has a physique which, to begin with, would command respectful attention for anything he might have to say concerning the wares he had to sell. He seems to have, from your brief description of him, that suavity of manner which would surely secure his admittance into the houses of the elite, and his sense of humor I judge to be sufficiently highly developed to enable him to make a sale wherever he felt there was the remotest chance. Is he handsome?"
"I am told he looks like me," said the Doctor, pleasantly.
"Oh, well," rejoined the Idiot, "good looks aren't essential after all. It would be better though if he were a man of fine presence. If he's big and genial, as you suggest, he can carry off his deficiencies in personal pulchritude."
The Doctor flushed a trifle. "Oh, Bill isn't so plain," he observed airily. "There's none of your sissy beauty about Bill, I grant you, but—oh, well"—here the Doctor twirled his mustache complacently.
"I should think the place for Bill would be on the trolley," sneered the Bibliomaniac.
"No, sir," returned the Idiot. "Never. Geniality never goes on the trolley. In the first place it isn't appreciated by the Management and in the second place it is a dangerous gift for a motor-man. I had a friend once—a college graduate of very much Bill's kind—who went on the trolley as a Conductor at seven dollars a week and, by Jingo, would you believe it, all his friends waited for his car and of course he never asked any of 'em for their fare. Gentlemen, he used to say, welcome to my car. This is on me."
"Swindled the Company by letting his friends ride free, eh?" said the Bibliomaniac.