“Sure you won’t,” quoth the sympathetic Step. “No fellow likes to ’fess up when the joke’s on him.”
“The joke!” roared Poke. “Great Scott, but you’ve got a mighty queer notion of what’s funny! You’d like to see a house fall on a fellow.”
“Oh, come now! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” pleaded Step.
“You can’t hurt ’em worse than they’re already hurt,” groaned Poke, of a sudden dreary again.
He went away, so downcast and so unlike his normally cheerful self that Step was stricken with fear for him, tinged with remorse for his own lightsome treatment of the subject. And, being thus burdened in soul, he had an inspiration. He happened to know where some old catalogues of city department stores were gathering dust in an attic. These volumes, brought to light and consulted, offered hope. Step carried them to Poke.
“Look here!” he said. “Maybe ’twon’t be so fierce, after all. Here’s a whopping big vase—I guess it’s taller than the one at the hotel. And it’s priced at only $3.98. There’s a picture of it.”
Poke eagerly inspected the cut. Then his face fell.
“’Tisn’t the same shape,” he objected.
“Well, no—not exactly the same,” Step confessed. “There is a little difference.”
“A little difference! Just about as little as there is between your shape and mine!”