“You bet you wouldn’t,” said the other man.  “That ain’t the way benefactors go to work.  What be you goin’ to do at Doc Gordon’s?”

“Drive,” replied James laconically.

“Guess you can’t take care of hosses in no sech togs as them.”

“I’ve got some others.  I’m going to learn to doctor a little, too, if I can.”

The man surveyed him, then he burst into a great laugh.  “Well,” said he, “when I git the measles I’ll call you in.”

“All right,” said James, “I won’t charge you a red cent.  I’ll doctor you and all your children and your wife for nothing.”

“Guess you won’t need to charge nothin’ for the wife and kids, seein’ as I ain’t got none,” said the man.  “Ketch me saddled up with a woman an’ kids, if I know what I’m about.  Them’s for the benefactors.  I live in a little shanty I rigged up myself out of two packin’ boxes.  I’ve got ’em on a man’s medder here.  He let me squat for nothin’.  I git my meals here, an’ I work on the railroad, an’ I’ve got a soft snap, with nobody to butt in.  Here, Mame, give us another cup of coffee.  Mame’s the girl I want, if I could hev one.  Ain’t you, Mame?”

The girl, who was a blonde, with an exaggerated pompadour fastened with aggressive celluloid pins, smiled pertly.  “Reckon I h’ain’t no more use for men than you hev for women,” said she, as she poured the coffee.  All that could be seen of her behind the counter was her head, and her waist clad in a red blouse, pinned so high to her skirt in the rear that it almost touched her shoulder blades.  The blouse was finished at the neck with a nice little turn-over collar fastened with a brooch set with imitation diamonds and sapphires.

“Now, Mame, you know,” said the man with assumed pathos, “that it is only because I’m a poor devil that I don’t go kerflop the minute I set eyes on you.  But you wouldn’t like to live in boxes, would you?  Would you now?”

“Not till my time comes, and not in boxes, then, less I’m in a railroad accident,” replied the girl, with ghastly jocularity.

“She’s got another feller, or you might git her if you’ve got a stiddy job,” the man said, winking at James with familiarity.

“Just my luck,” said James.  He looked at the girl, and thought her pretty and pathetic, with a vulgar, almost tragic, prettiness and pathos.  She was anaemic and painfully thin.  Her blouse was puffed out over her flat chest.  She looked worn out with the miserable little tediums of life, with constant stepping over ant-hills of stupidity and petty hopelessness.  Her work was not, comparatively speaking, arduous, but the serving of hot coffee and frankfurters to workingmen was not progressive, and she looked as if her principal diet was the left-overs of the stock in trade.  She seemed to exhale an odor of musty sandwiches and sausages and muddy coffee.

The man swallowed his second cup in fierce gulps.  He glanced at his Ingersoll watch.  “Gee whiz!” said he.  “It’s time I was off!  Good-by, Mame.”