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Then, to come to the lithographers, as I think I already have told you, these men place small bills in store and shop windows, giving tickets for the privilege the same as do the billposters. One man goes ahead of them and does what we call 'the squaring, meaning that he enters the stores and asks the privilege of putting up the lithographs.
Suddenly he let go of the loop. It soared upward. Then they began to understand. He was trying to rope the cupola. The rope fell short by about three feet, as nearly as he was able to judge. "Oh, pshaw!" muttered Phil. "That was a clumsy throw. I would make just about as good a cowboy as I am a billposters. Well, here goes for another try." He put all his strength into the throw this time.
The car set up a roar of laughter at the ludicrous sight. To Phil, however, it was no laughing matter. The paste can was nearly full of paste and of about the same consistency as dough in a bread pan. It was thick and wickedly blue, for it had been mixed with bluestone to preserve it until required by the billposters. "Pull him out, you idiots!" bellowed the car manager.
"If you want to have a thing done well," he exclaimed, "you must do it yourself or see personally that it is done. There is no use in having printing unless you get it up where the public can see it. Billposters are peculiar people. They are in certain respects economical, and they have their own peculiar ideas of saving.
"It is where the advertisements for Besse Baker's twenty-seven stores cease," said Sam drowsily, "and the billposters of Ethel Barrymore begin." In the front of the car the two young people spoke only at intervals, but Winthrop had never been so widely alert, so keenly happy, never before so conscious of her presence.
"He's at it again," grinned Teddy, as the voice of the manager was heard roaring at the men. Snowden was charging up and down the car venting his wrath on the men, threatening, browbeating, expressing his opinion of all billposters in language more picturesque than elegant. Not a man replied to his tirade. "Evidently they are used to that sort of treatment," nodded Phil.
Teddy surveyed the waiter with large eyes, then permitted his gaze to wander about the table to the faces of the grinning billposters. "Bean soup. What'll I have?" reflected the lad soberly. "Now isn't it funny that I can't think what kind of soup I want. Bean soup; what'll I have?"
Phil, who had gone to the wash room to make his toilet, hurried back at sound of the row. "Teddy Tucker, what are you doing?" demanded Phil, for the moment puzzled at the scene before him. "I'm sitting on the Boss," answered Teddy triumphantly. "Shall I give him one for you?" "Yes give him two for each of us," shouted the billposters.
Following us come route-riders." "What are they?" "Men who ride over the country routes to see whether the billposters have put up the paper indicated on their reports, or thrown the stuff in a ditch somewhere. After them come checkers, one after the other. This is Car Three, as you know. Car Two follows about two weeks behind us, and Car One comes along a week ahead of the show.
The waiter shifted his weight to the other foot, flopped the napkin to the other arm and stuck out his chin belligerently. "Bean soup! What'll you have?" he demanded, with a rising inflection in his voice. "Let me think. Why, I guess I'll take bean soup if it's all the same to you," decided Tucker, solemn as an owl. The billposters broke out into a roar of laughter.
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