Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/253

Rh I struck this place and found that my inheritance was nothing more than a full-grown, man-size mortgage. So I looked around for something to do until I could get a start at surveying. I couldn't find anything until I happened on an advertisement in the paper for a pianist at the theater. Well, playing in a theater orchestra didn't seem to me to be just what you'd expect a civil engineer to do. I thought that perhaps if people knew I did that they wouldn't consider me much good as a surveyor. So I concluded I'd wear that mustache as a sort of disguise. I had a lot of trouble with it at first. Got to the stage door one day without it and had to go back for it. And once it dropped off on the piano keys, but no one noticed it, fortunately. This leading a double life is trying, fellows!

At that moment the sauce-pan on the little stove began to boil over and Mr. Addicks jumped up and rescued it.

"We'd better be going along, I guess," said Perry. "You haven't had your breakfast, and neither have we."

"I'd ask you to have some with me, only, as a matter of fact, my larder is pretty empty this morning. Tell you what, fellows, drop around after the theater this afternoon and we'll go on