"Just then somebody gets up in the hall and yells out, 'Rotten, rotten, what you caller dat but de bribe, eh?' and another feller shies a pineapple at him, whatever he had it there for. Pa says mebbe he's ripenin' it by the stove so as to sell it the next day. Anyway it misses the man what's makin' the noise and hits the ork-estra leader on the brain-house, and the next I knowed Pa has me downstairs—it's only one flight—and he says to me, 'We'll wait for Jimmy,' he says, and we did.
"And every minute we waited there was something doing. Why there was Greeks and Hungarians and Dagos and all kinds coming out the winders or rolling down the stairs and rushing back again, some of them with their noses bleeding and their clothes torn, and all the time shoutin' like mad. Then all of a sudden everything calms down to a whisper, and men began to fly outer that buildin' and run away like mad.
"So when the Honorable Fixem's safely in his carriage, and Jimmy Duggan's walking home with Pa and me. Pa says, 'What stopped it, Jimmy?' And Jimmy says, 'Well, I just got a few of the fellers together,' he says, 'and we hollers "Steeletters, steeletters," and that scared 'em, you bet, for they're all afraid of their lives of them 'Talian knives.'
"'Pretty smart hit, Jimmy,' Pa says, 'but it's almost a pity you didn't get three inches or so of steeletter in your hide,' he says, 'after what you said to that feller sittin' beside me.' 'Well,' says Jimmy, 'he's a Russian,' he says, 'what was mixed up in some of the Nillyist plots, and the only way to keep him quiet,' he says, 'was to tell him you'd been driven looney by the cruelty of the Russian gover'ment,' he says."
Thus William Adolphus Turnpike, office boy, to Lucien Torrance, who held a similar exalted position. They were sitting on the front stairs leading to the adjoining offices occupied by Mr. Whimple and his friend Simmons, the architect, in the city of Toronto. The city was then at the transition period; its population had just passed the 200,000 mark, and already included a fair number of lunatics who clamored for a million people. But it had not yet made up its mind that dumping sewage into the Bay and believing that it would not contaminate the adjoining lake, whence came the water supply, was a system apt to result in a large proportion of typhoid fever cases. People had typhoid, and either died of it or got better, and in the latter event they resumed the drinking of the city water.
CHAPTER II
William had engaged himself to work for Mr. Charles Whimple, "barrister, etc.," just one week previously in response to that gentleman's advertisement for "a bright and intelligent office boy; one who knows the city well." When he arrived at the office on the morning after the insertion of the advertisement, Whimple found William busily engaged in dusting off the lone table in his room. At the back of the office, with its small, very small, ante-room, was the office of his friend, Simmons, and as he was usually down an hour earlier than Whimple, he "opened up" and kept an eye on things for the barrister until he arrived. As Whimple entered, William greeted him with a cheery "Good-morning, Mr. Whimple."
"Good-morning, what are you doing here?"
"I'm your office boy."