But I was goin’ to tell you about Harry Quinn. He’s a boy about twenty-three or twenty-four years old and he’s been down to the office about a year and a half. He come there as a bookkeeper at twelve a week, but they just couldn’t keep him down; and six months ago they made him fourth assistant head shippin’ clerk at a salary o’ sixteen.
To show you what kind o’ taste he’s got, he took a likin’ to me; and every time he come past my desk he’d have to stop and chin a while. At first I didn’t mind, because it was fun to kid him. He never knew nothin’ about nothin’ and you could tell him almost anything and get by with it. Finally I run out o’ junk to feed him and when I’d see him comin’ I’d pretend I was too busy to talk.
But one day, along last February, I looked up and seen him standin’ beside me, simply bubblin’ over with some big news.
“Well, Harry,” I says, “spill it.”
“You’re married, ain’t you?” he ast me.
I told him I was.
“Do you mind tellin’ me,” he says, “how much it costs to live when you got a wife?”
“Practically nothin’,” I says. “Everything’s so reasonable these days.”
“Why,” he says, “I been readin’ a lot about high prices, and so on.”
“That’s a lot o’ bunk,” I told him. “Beefsteak’s only forty cents a pound; and if you’re well acquainted round the neighborhood you can get a