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"If it was one of US, now," said Bert Johnson. Upon which they broke into simultaneous good-natured laughter. "It's queer, isn't it," young Baumgarten put in, "how a fellow always feels sore when he sees another fellow with a peach like that? It's just straight human nature, I guess." The door swung open to admit a newcomer, at the sight of whom Jem Belter exclaimed joyously: "Good old Georgie!
"Let's give him a fine dinner. We can make it between us. Beefsteak and mushrooms, and potatoes hashed brown. He likes them. Good old G. S. I shall be right glad to see him. Hope foreign travel has not given him the swell head." "Don't believe it's hurt him a bit. His letter didn't sound like it. Little Georgie ain't a fool," said Jem Belter. Tom Wetherbee was looking over the letter referred to.
As they sat round the corner table, they produced the effect of gathering close about G. Selden. They concentrated their combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their folded arms, to watch him as he talked. "He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd spent more money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough. Landed dead broke.
He said it almost solemnly, and laid his hand on the table. "It was like one of those yarns Bert tells us. Half the time I didn't believe it, and half the time I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening to me and none of your fellows were in it." "Oh, well," said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows, anyhow. Look at Nick, there."
Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter, but even before he produced his letter a certain truthful seriousness in his look had startled them. When he laid the envelope down each man caught his breath. It could not be denied that Jem Belter turned pale with emotion. Jem had never been one of the lucky ones.
Jem Belter, who "hammered" a typewriter at Schwab's Brewery, Tom Wetherbee, who was "in a downtown office," Bert Johnson, who was "out for the Delkoff," and Nick Baumgarten, who having for some time "beaten" certain streets as assistant salesman for the same illustrious machine, had been recently elevated to a "territory" of his own, and was therefore in high spirits. "Say!" he said.
"Get onto that pink stuff on her hat, will you. She done it because it's just the colour of her cheeks." They all looked, and the girl was aware of it, and began to laugh and talk coquettishly to the young man who was her companion. "I wonder where she got Clarence?" said Jem Belter in sarcastic allusion to her escort. "The things those lookers have fastened on to them gets ME."
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