Page:The Four Million (1906).djvu/96

 Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day.

Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours’ grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces strong drink.

I went into a café to—and while it was being mixed I asked the man who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he understood by the term, epithet, description, designation, characterisation or appellation, viz.: a “Man About Town.”

“Why,” said he, carefully, “it means a fly guy that’s wise to the all-night push—see? It’s a hot sport that you can’t bump to the rail anywhere between the Flatirons—see? I guess that’s about what it means.”

I thanked him and departed.

On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket.

“Would you mind telling me,” I asked her, “if