Now look at this dippy move of Mr. Jarvis's. Guess you don't remember him. I'd 'most forgot him myself, it's so long since he was around; but he's the young chap that owns that big Blenmont place, the gent that Swifty and I helped out with the fake match when he----Well, never mind that yarn. He got the girl, all right; and as he had everything else anybody could think of, it should have been a case of lockin' trouble on the outside and takin' joy for a permanent boarder.

But there the other mornin', just as I was havin' a breathin' spell after hammerin' some surplus ego out of a young society sport that had the idea he could box, the studio door opens, and in pokes this Mr. Jarvis, actin'

like he'd been doped.

Now he's a big, husky, full blooded young gent, that's always used himself well, never collected any bad habits, and knows no more about being sick than a cat knows about swimmin'. Add to that the fact that he's one of the unemployed rich, with more money than he knows how to spend, and you can figure out how surprised I am to see that down and out look on his face. Course, I thinks something serious has been happenin'

to him, and I treats him real gentle.

"Hello, Mr. Jarvis!" says I. "Somebody been throwin' the hooks into you, have they?"

"Oh, no," says he. "No, I--I'm all right."

"That's good," says I. "Dropped in to let me hand you a few vibrations with the mitts?"

"No, thank you, Shorty," says he, fingerin' a chair-back sort of hesitatin', as if he didn't know whether to sit down or stand up. "That is--er--I think I don't care for a bout to-day. I--I'm hardly in the mood, you see."

"Just as you say," says I. "Have a seat, anyway. Sure! That one; it's reserved for you. Maybe you come in to enjoy some of my polite and refined conversation?"

"Why--er--the fact is, Shorty," says he, fixin' his tie kind of nervous, "I--I don't know just why I did come in. I think I started for the club, and as I was passing by in a cab I looked up here at your windows--and--and----"

"Of course," says I, soothin'. "What's the use goin' to the club when the Physical Culture Studio is handier? You're feelin' fine as silk; how're you lookin'?"

"Eh? Beg pardon?" says he, gettin' twisted up on that mothy gag. "Oh, I see! I'm looking rotten, thank you, and feeling the same."

"G'wan!" says I. "You ain't got any license to have feelin's like that.

Guess you got the symptoms mixed. But where do you think it hurts most?"

Well, it takes five or ten minutes of jollyin' like that to pull any details at all out of Jarvis, and when I does get the whole heartrendin'

story, I hardly knows whether to give him the laugh, or to send out for a nursin' bottle.

Ever seen a great, grown man play the baby act? Talk about a woman in a cryin' spell! That ain't a marker to watchin' a six-foot, one hundred and eighty-pound free citizen droop his mouth corners and slump his shoulders over nothin' at all. Course, I don't always feel like a hickey boy myself, and I'll admit there are times when the rosy tints get a little clouded up; but I has my own way of workin' out of such spells before the mullygrubs turns my gray matter into curdled milk. But Jarvis, he's as blue as a rainy Monday with the wash all in soak.

In the first place, he's been alone for nearly three whole weeks, the women folks all bein' abroad, and it's a new experience for him. Think of that awful calamity happenin' to a man of his size! Seems that before he was married he'd always carted mother and sister around, under the idea that he was lookin' out for them, when as a matter of fact they was the ones that was lookin' after him. Then Mrs. Jarvis, Lady Evelyn that was, takes him in hand and makes him more helpless than ever. He never mistrusts how much he's been mollycoddled, until he finds himself with nobody but a valet, a housekeeper, and seventeen assorted servants to help him along in the struggle for existence.

His first move after the ladies have sailed is to smoke until his tongue feels like a pussycat's back, eat his lonesome meals at lunch-counter clip, and work himself into a mild bilious state. That makes him a little cranky with the help, and, as there's no one around to smooth 'em out, the cook and half a dozen maids leaves in a bunch. His head coachman goes off on a bat, the housekeeper skips out to Ohio to bury an aunt, and the domestic gear at Blenmont gets to runnin' about as smooth as a flat wheel trolley car on a new roadbed.

To finish off the horrible situation, Jarvis has had a misunderstandin'

with a landscape architect that he'd engaged to do things to the grounds.

Jarvis had planned to plant a swan lake in the front yard; but the landscaper points out that it can't be done because there's a hill in the way.

"To be sure," says Jarvis, "these are little things; but I've been worrying over them until--until---- Well, I'm in bad shape, Shorty."

"It's a wonder you're still alive," says I.

"Don't!" says he, groanin'. "It is too serious a matter. Perhaps you don't know it, but I had an uncle that drank himself to death."

"Huh!" says I. "'Most everybody has had an uncle of that kind."

"And one of my cousins," Jarvis goes on, lowerin' his voice and lookin'

around cautious, "shot himself--in the head!"

"Eh?" says I. And then I begun to get a glimmer of what he was drivin'

at. "What! You don't mean that you were thinkin' of--of----"

He groans again and nods his head.

Then I cuts loose. "Why, look here!" says I. "You soft boiled, mush headed, spineless imitation of a real man! do you mean to tell me that, just because you've been tied loose from a few skirts for a week or so, and have had to deal with some grouchy hired hands, you've actually gone jelly brained over it?"

Perhaps that don't make him squirm some, though! He turns white first, and then he gets the hectic flush. "Pardon me, McCabe," says he, stiffenin' up, "but I don't care to have anyone talk to me like----"

"Ah, pickles!" says I. "I'll talk to you a good deal straighter'n that, before I finish! And you'll take it, too! Why, you great, overgrown kid!

what right have you developin' such a yellow cur streak as that? You!

What you need is to be laid over that chair and paddled, and blamed if I don't know but I'd better----"

But just here the door creaks, and in drifts the other one. Hanged if I ever did know what his real name was. I called him Heiney Kirschwasser for short, though he says he ain't Dutch at all, but Swiss-French; and that it ain't kirsch that's his failin', but prune brandy. He's the mop and broom artist for the buildin', some floater the janitor picked up off the sidewalk a few months back.

He wa'n't exactly a decorative object, this Heiney; but he's kind of a picturesque ruin. His widest part is around the belt; and from there he tapers both ways, his shoulders bein' a good eight inches narrower; and on top of them, with no neck to speak of, is a head shaped like a gum drop, bald on top, and remindin' you of them mountain peaks you see in pictures, or a ham set on end.

He has a pair of stary, pop eyes, a high colored beak that might be used as a danger signal, and a black, shoebrush beard, trimmed close except for a little spike under the chin, that gives the lower part of his face a look like the ace of spades. His mornin' costume is a faded blue jumper, brown checked pants, and an old pair of rubber soled shoes that Swifty had donated to him.

That's Heiney's description, as near as I can get to it. He comes shufflin' in, luggin' a scrub pail in one hand, and draggin' a mop in the other, and he looks about as cheerful as a worn-out hearse that's been turned into an ash wagon.

"Heiney," says I, "you're just in time. Still lookin' for a nice, comfortable place to die in, are you?"

Heiney shrugs his shoulders and lifts his eyebrows in a lifeless sort of style. He does most of his conversin' that way; but he can say more with a few shrugs than Swifty Joe can by usin' both sides of his mouth. What Heiney means is that one place is as good as another, and he don't care how soon he finds it.

"Well, cheer up, Heiney," says I; "for I've just decided to give you the use of my back room to shuffle off in. I've got comp'ny for you, too.

Here's a friend of mine that feels the same way you do. Mr. Jarvis, Mr.

Heiney Kirschwasser."

And you should have seen the look of disgust on Jarvis's face as he sizes up the specimen. "Oh, I say now, Shorty," he begins, "there's such a thing as----"

"G'wan!" says I. "Wa'n't you just tellin' me about how you was plannin' a job for the coroner? And Heiney's been threatenin' to do the same thing for weeks. He comes in here every day or so and talks about jumpin' off the dock, or doin' the air dance. I've been stavin' him off with slugs of prune brandy and doses of good advice; but if a chap like you has caught the fever, then I see I've been doin' wrong not to let Heiney have his way. Now there's the back room, with plenty of rope and gasjets. Get on in there, both of you, and make a reg'lar bee of it!"

Heiney, he stands blinkin' and starin' at Jarvis, until he gets him so nervous he almost screams.

"For Heaven's sake, Shorty," says Jarvis, "let's not joke about such a subject!"

"Joke!" says I. "You're the one that's supplyin' the comedy here. Now Heiney is serious. He'd do the trick in a minute if he had the nerve.

He's got things on his mind, Heiney has. And what's the odds if they ain't so? Compared to what you've been fussin' about, they're----Here, Heiney, you tell the gentleman that tale of yours. Begin where you was a cook in some seashore hotel in Switzerland."

"Not zeashore! _Non_!" says Heiney, droppin' his pail and wavin' one hand. "Eet ees at Lack Como, in ze montongs. I am ze head chef, _moi!_"

"Yes, you look it!" says I. "A fine figure of a chef you'd make! wouldn't you? Well, go on: about bein' full of prunes when they called on you to season the soup. What was it you dumped in instead of salt,--arsenic, eh?"

"_Non, non!_" says Heiney, gettin' excited. "Ze poison for ze r-r-rat. I keep heem in one tin can, same as ze salt. I am what you call intoxicate.

I make ze mistak'. Ah, _diable! Deux, trois_--t'ree hundred guests are zere. Zey eat ze soup. Zen come by me ze _maitre d'hotel._ He say ze soup ees spoil. Eet has ze foony taste. Ah, mon _Dieu! Mon_----"

"Yes, yes," says I. "Never mind whether it was Monday or Tuesday. What did you do then?"