realised with gall in his soul that the “brute,” as he called him, meant “Schloss,” and that his mispronunciation was at once a matter of humour and derision—­“wasn’t his at all.  It was his elder brother’s.  The whole lot of them were counts and not one of them seemed to own a dime.  The Slosh count hadn’t more than twenty-five cents and he wasn’t the kind to deal any of it out to his family.  So Lily’s count would have to go clerking in a dry goods store, if he promised to support himself.  But he didn’t propose to do it.  He thought he’d got on to a soft thing.  Of course we’re an easy-going lot and we should have stood him if he’d been a nice fellow.  But he wasn’t.  Lily’s mother used to find her crying in her bedroom and it came out by degrees that it was because Adolf had been quarrelling with her and saying sneering things about her family.  When her mother talked to him he was insulting.  Then bills began to come in and Lily was expected to get me to pay them.  And they were not the kind of bills a decent fellow calls on another man to pay.  But I did it five or six times to make it easy for her.  I didn’t tell her that they gave an older chap than himself sidelights on the situation.  But that didn’t work well.  He thought I did it because I had to, and he began to feel free and easy about it, and didn’t try to cover up his tracks so much when he sent in a new lot.  He was always working Lily.  He began to consider himself master of the house.  He intimated that a private carriage ought to be kept for them.  He said it was beggarly that he should have to consider the rest of the family when he wanted to go out.  When I got on to the situation, I began to enjoy it.  I let him spread himself for a while just to see what he would do.  Good Lord!  I couldn’t have believed that any fellow could have thought any other fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was.  He went perfectly crazy after a month or so and ordered me about and patronised me as if I was a bootblack he meant to teach something to.  So at last I had a talk with Lily and told her I was going to put an end to it.  Of course she cried and was half frightened to death, but by that time he had ill-used her so that she only wanted to get rid of him.  So I sent for him and had a talk with him in my office.  I led him on to saying all he had on his mind.  He explained to me what a condescension it was for a man like himself to marry a girl like Lily.  He made a dignified, touching picture of all the disadvantages of such an alliance and all the advantages they ought to bring in exchange to the man who bore up under them.  I rubbed my head and looked worried every now and then and cleared my throat apologetically just to warm him up.  I can tell you that fellow felt happy, downright happy when he saw how humbly I listened to him.  He positively swelled up with hope and comfort.  He thought I was going to turn out well, real well.  I was going to pay up just as a vulgar New York father-in-law ought to do, and thank God for the blessed privilege.  Why, he was real eloquent about his blood and his ancestors and the hoary-headed Slosh.  So when he’d finished, I cleared my throat in a nervous, ingratiating kind of way again and I asked him kind of anxiously what he thought would be the proper thing for a base-born New York millionaire to do under the circumstances—­what he would approve of himself.”