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Hunger
55

He looks at me with an amazed start.

"By the way, how are you getting on?" he asks it slowly.

"Oh, beyond all expectation!"

"Then you have got something to do now?"

"Something to do?" I answer and seem surprised. "Rather! Why, I am book-keeper at Christensen's—a wholesale house."

"Oh, indeed!" he remarks and draws back a little.

"Well, God knows I am the first to be pleased at your success. If only you don't let people beg the money from you that you earn. Good-day!"

A second after he wheels round and comes back and, pointing with his cane to my parcel, says:

"I would recommend my tailor to you for the suit of clothes. You won't find a better tailor than Isaksen—just say I sent you, that's all!"

This was really rather more than I could swallow. What did he want to poke his nose in my affairs for? Was it any concern of his which tailor I employed? The sight of this empty-headed dandified "masher" embittered me, and I reminded him rather brutally of ten