"Chee! You're all to the Wall Street!"

"I got to look out for my stepmother, too. She'd crown me with a chair
if she thought I held out on her. Beans me about every day just for
nothing anyway."

"Don't you stand for it!"

"Yah! All right for you to talk. You're the lucky guy. You're an orphan.
S'pose you had a stepmother! I wish I was an orphan."

Jimmie swelled with the pride of orphanship.

"Yes; I'd hate to have any parents knocking me round," he said. "But if
it ain't a stepmother then it's somebody else that beans you. A guy in
this burg is always getting knocked round by somebody."

"Read some more of the novel," pleaded Boogles, to change the
distressing topic.

Jimmie drew a tattered paper romance from the pocket of his faded coat
and pushed the cap back from his seamed old forehead. It went back
easily, having been built for a larger head than his. He found the place
he had marked at the end of his previous half-hour with literature.
Boogles leaned eagerly toward him. He loved being read to. Doing it
himself was too slow and painful:

"'No,' said our hero in a clear, ringing voice; 'all your tainted gold
would not keep me here in the foul, crowded city. I must have the free,