It is now but the work of a moment to lift the saucepan of peas from the fire, strain them through a colander, pass them thence into a net or bag, rinse them in cold water and then spread the whole appetising mass on a platter and carry it on a fireshovel to the dining-room.  As it is now about six o’clock in the evening, our housekeeper can either—­

   TELEPHONE TO HIS CLUB
   AND ORDER A THIN SOUP
   WITH A BITE OF FISH,
   TWO LAMB CHOPS WITH ASPARAGUS,
   AND SEND WORD ALSO
   FOR A PINT OF MOSELLE
   TO BE LAID ON ICE

Or he can sit down and eat those d—­n peas.

   WE KNOW WHICH HE WILL DO

VIII.  Every Man and his Friends.  Mr. Crunch’s Portrait Gallery (as Edited from his Private Thoughts)

(I) HIS VIEWS ON HIS EMPLOYER

A mean man.  I say it, of course, without any prejudice, and without the slightest malice.  But the man is mean.  Small, I think, is the word.  I am not thinking, of course, of my own salary.  It is not a matter that I would care to refer to; though, as a matter of fact, one would think that after fifteen years of work an application for an increase of five hundred dollars is the kind of thing that any man ought to be glad to meet half-way.  Not that I bear the man any malice for it.  None.  If he died to-morrow, no one would regret his death as genuinely as I would:  if he fell into the river and got drowned, or if he fell into a sewer and suffocated, or if he got burned to death in a gas explosion (there are a lot of things that might happen to him), I should feel genuinely sorry to see him cut off.

But what strikes me more than the man’s smallness is his incompetence.  The man is absolutely no good.  It’s not a thing that I would say outside:  as a matter of fact I deny it every time I hear it, though every man in town knows it.  How that man ever got the position he has is more than I can tell.  And, as for holding it, he couldn’t hold it half a day if it weren’t that the rest of us in the office do practically everything for him.

Why, I’ve seen him send out letters (I wouldn’t say this to anyone outside, of course, and I wouldn’t like to have it repeated)—­letters with, actually, mistakes in English.  Think of it, in English!  Ask his stenographer.

I often wonder why I go on working for him.  There are dozens of other companies that would give anything to get me.  Only the other day—­it’s not ten years ago—­I had an offer, or practically an offer, to go to Japan selling Bibles.  I often wish now I had taken it.  I believe I’d like the Japanese.  They’re gentlemen, the Japanese.  They wouldn’t turn a man down after slaving away for fifteen years.

I often think I’ll quit him.  I say to my wife that that man had better not provoke me too far; or some day I’ll just step into his office and tell him exactly what I think of him.  I’d like to.  I often say it over to myself in the street car coming home.