At the desk of the cashier, a decorative blonde, he put a cent in the machine which good-naturedly drops out boxes of matches. No box dropped this time, though he worked the lever noisily.
"Out of order?" asked the cashier lady. "Here's two boxes of matches. Guess you've earned them."
"Well, well, well, well!" sounded the voice of his friend, the fat man, who stood at the desk paying his bill. "Pretty easy, heh? Two boxes for one cent! Sting the restaurant." Cocking his head, he carefully inserted a cent in the slot and clattered the lever, turning to grin at Mr. Wrenn, who grinned back as the machine failed to work.
"Let me try it," caroled Mr. Wrenn, and pounded the lever with the enthusiasm of comradeship.
"Nothing doing, lady," crowed the fat man to the cashier.
"I guess I draw two boxes, too, eh? And I'm in a cigar-store. How's that for stinging your competitors, heh? Ho, ho, ho!"
The cashier handed him two boxes, with an embarrassed simper, and the fat man clapped Mr. Wrenn's shoulder joyously.
"My turn!" shouted a young man in a fuzzy green hat and a bright-brown suit, who had been watching with the sudden friendship which unites a crowd brought together by an accident.
Mr. Wrenn was glowing. "No, it ain't--it's mine," he achieved. "I invented this game." Never had he so stood forth in a crowd. He was a Bill Wrenn with the cosmopolitan polish of a floor-walker. He stood beside the fat man as a friend of sorts, a person to be taken perfectly seriously.
It is true that he didn't add to this spiritual triumph the triumph of getting two more boxes of matches, for the cashier-girl exclaimed, "No indeedy; it's my turn!" and lifted the match machine to a high shelf behind her. But Mr. Wrenn went out of the restaurant with his old friend, the fat man, saying to him quite as would a wit, "I guess we get stung, eh?"
"Yuh!" gurgled the fat man.
Walking down to your store?"
"Yuh--sure--won't you walk down a piece?"
"Yes, I would like to. Which way is it?"
"Fourth Avenue and Twenty-eighth."
"Walk down with you."
"Fine!"
And the fat man seemed to mean it. He confided to Mr. Wrenn that the fishing was something elegant at Trulen, New Jersey; that he was some punkins at the casting of flies in fishing; that he wished exceedingly to be at Trulen fishing with flies, but was prevented by the manager of the cigar-store; that the manager was an old devil; that his (the fat man's own) name was Tom Poppins; that the store had a slick new brand of Manila cigars, kept in a swell new humidor bought upon the advice of himself (Mr. Poppins); that one of the young clerks in the store had done fine in the Modified Marathon; that the Cubs had had a great team this year; that he'd be glad to give Mr.--Mr. Wrenn, eh?--one of those Manila cigars--great cigars they were, too; and that he hadn't "laughed so much for a month of Sundays as he had over the way they stung Miggleton's on them matches."