Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/276

 "It's a wonder he didn't lose his temper too," I says when I could talk.

"Say, vot's the matter—you're laughin' from me?" asks Hershel indignantly.

Just then Pete Kift comes up with murder in his eye.

"Get on that elevator, monkey," he hollers at Hershel, "or I'll knock you from under your hat!"

"Thenks just the same," says Hershel, moving away, "I could take it off myself!"

Thus Hershel.

Really, how this young man ever managed to hold his portfolio at the St. Moe is a subject for bigger brains than mine, but hold it he did. In spite of constant persecution from morning till night, he carried on smartly and clung like a cold in the head. Hershel was a little too burly for the other bellhops to trifle with and then that "Kid Rose" seemed to mean something to them too, but honestly, Jerry and Pete made his life positively brutal. That bothered Hershel the same way the income tax bothers an almshouse habitué; he was a silent partner in the noted firm of Grin & Bear It, an absolute gourmand for cruel and unusual punishment!

One day Hazel drags me off bodily to a private auction sale. Private auctions are the milk-fed Hazel's specialty; she bids as if she was playing pinochle