Mr. Bruce lit a cigar and puffed in dreamy content for a few minutes before replying.
"You know my friend Mr. Jones here, I believe?" he said, with an airy wave of the hand toward the little man whose face at that moment looked as though he had just taken a dose of castor oil.
"We have seen him before," said Charley coldly.
"Mr. Jones is a remarkable man, a very remarkable man," said the lawyer, and the lad thought he could detect a mocking note in Mr. Bruce's voice as he continued. "Like many other remarkable men, however, Mr. Jones has not until the present time been able to gratify his greatest desire and ambition. Is that not correct, Jones?"
"Go on. You're doing the talking," said the little man grimly.
"That's so, I am," said Mr. Bruce, with the air of one who had just been informed of a startling fact. "You're a man of unusual observation and intelligence, Jones. Well, gentlemen, even in childhood Mr. Jones gave evidence of what was to be his ruling passion in life. Before he had reached the age of five, he nearly lost a finger in trying to discover how his mother's clothes-wringer worked. Your mother did have a clothes-wringer, didn't she, Jones?"
"That was before the clothes-wringers came into use," growled the little man testily. "Can't you come to the point?"
"Dear me, so it was," agreed the lawyer. "I have got my facts all mixed some way. Well, at the age of six, Mr. Jones was licked by his father for taking the family lawn-mower to pieces to discover what made it cut grass."
"We didn't have any lawn or lawn-mower," declared the little man mildly.