By L.H. ROBBINS
From Everybody's
Jacob Downey waited in line at the meat shop. A footsore little man was he. All day long,
six days a week for twenty-two years, he had stood on his feet, trotted on them, climbed
on them, in the hardware department of Wilbram, Prescot & Co., and still they would not
toughen; still they would hurt; still to sustain his spirit after three o'clock he had to invoke
a vision of slippers, a warm radiator, the Evening Bee, and the sympathy of Mrs. Downey
and the youngsters. To the picture this evening he had added pork chops.
The woman next in line ahead of him named her meat. Said the butcher, with a side
glance at the clock, "A crown roast takes quite a while, lady. Could I send it in the
morning?"
No, the lady wished to see it prepared. Expressly for that purpose had she come out in the
rain. To-morrow she gave a luncheon.
"First come first served," thought Jacob Downey, and bode his time in patience, feeling
less pity for his aching feet than for Butcher Myers. Where was the charity in asking a
hurried man at five minutes to six o'clock to frill up a roast that would not see the inside
of the oven before noon next day?
Now, crown roasts are one thing to him who waits on fallen arches, and telephone calls
are another. Scarcely had Downey's opening come to speak for pork chops cut medium
when off went the bell and off rushed Butcher Myers.
Sharply he warned the unknown that this was Myers's Meat Shop. Blandly he smiled into
the transmitter upon learning that his caller was Mrs. A. Lincoln Wilbram.
By the audience in front of the counter the following social intelligence was presently
inferred:
That Mr. and Mrs. Wilbram had just returned from Florida; that they had enjoyed
themselves ever so much; that they hoped Mr. Myers's little girl was better; that they
were taking their meals at the Clarendon pending the mobilization of their house-
servants; that they expected to dine with the Mortimer Trevelyans this evening; that food
for the dog may with propriety be brought home from a hotel, but not from the Mortimer
Trevelyans; that there was utterly nothing in the icebox for poor Mudge's supper; that
Mudge was a chow dog purchased by a friend of Mr. Wilbram's in Hongkong at so much
a pound, just as Mr. Myers purchased live fowls; that Mudge now existed not to become
