Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/159

yard to smoke a pipe together while I performed some mental obsequies over my vanished Federal Reserve certificate. Dove looked up at the sparkling gilded turret of the Woolworth.

"I daresay Frank Woolworth would have fallen for it, too," Dove said. "The idea of a hundred meals for 10 cents each would have appealed to him. But you know, old man, there are certain fixed and immutable laws that the observant city dweller is accustomed to. My motto is, whenever you find an apparent exception to those laws, look for an enigma in the woodpile. I suspected something wrong when I saw that sandwich man on Church Street. A man as fat as that doesn't generally take a job sandwiching. Also I have doubts about people who insist on calling Christmas 'Yule'. Moreover, a man doesn't generally take a job sandwiching until his shirt is so ragged that he is ashamed to exhibit it in public, when he is glad to cover it up with the boards. Those two fat sandwicheers were members of the firm, I fear, for their linen was O. K. And, secondly, what are the first things a man gets if he really intends to start a restaurant? A cash register and a bunch of ketchup bottles. There wasn't a cash register nor a ketchup bottle in sight