It was the goddamnedest thing you ever saw in your life. This guy who's a wellknown lawyer down town was out in the hall bawlin out his gash about something. Jez he looked hard. And then he had a gun out an was goin to shoot her or some goddam thing when the chief comes up cool as you make em limpin on his stick like he does and took the gun away from him an put it in his pocket before anybody'd half seen what happened. . . . This guy Baldwin's a frien o his see? It was the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. Then he all crumpled up like. . . ."
"I tell you kid," said Joe Harland, "it gets em all sooner or later. . . ."
"Hay there eat up strong. You aint eaten enough."
"I cant eat very well."
"Sure you can. . . . Say Joe what's the dope about this war business?"
"I guess they are in for it this time. . . . I've known it was coming ever since the Agadir incident."
"Jez I like to see somebody wallop the pants off England after the way they wont give home rule to Ireland."
"We'd have to help em. . . . Anyway I dont see how this can last long. The men who control international finance wont allow it. After all it's the banker who holds the purse strings."
"We wouldn't come to the help of England, no sir, not after the way they acted in Ireland and in the Revolution and in the Civil War. . . ."
"Joey you're getting all choked up with that history you're reading up in the public library every night. . . . You follow the stock quotations and keep on your toes and dont let em fool you with all this newspaper talk about strikes and upheavals and socialism. ... I'd like to see you make good Joey. . . . Well I guess I'd better be going."
"Naw stick around awhile, we'll open a bottle of glue."
They heard a heavy stumbling in the passage outside the kitchen.
"Whossat?"
"Zat you Joe?" A big towheaded boy with lumpy shoul-
