I told him how I'd worked it up by instalments
when I was machinist in Waterbury, where the dollar-watches come from. He
had one on his wrist then. I told him how I'd met Zalinski (he'd never
heard of Zalinski!) when I was an extra clerk in the Naval Construction
Bureau at Washington. I told him how my uncle, who was a truck-farmer in
Noo Jersey (he loaned money on mortgage too, for ten acres ain't enough
now in Noo Jersey), how he'd willed me a quarter of a million dollars,
because I was the only one of our kin that called him down when he used to
come home with a hard-cider jag on him and heave ox-bows at his nieces. I
told him how I'd turned in every red cent on the Zigler, and I told him
the whole circus of my coming out with her, and so on, and so following;
and every forty seconds he'd wipe his moustache and blat, 'How
interesting. Really, now? How interesting.'
"It was like being in an old English book, Sir. Like _Bracebridge Hall_.
But an American wrote _that!_ I kept peeking around for the Boar's Head
and the Rosemary and Magna Charta and the Cricket on the Hearth, and the
rest of the outfit. Then Van Zyl whirled in. He was no ways jagged, but
thawed--thawed, Sir, and among friends. They began discussing previous
scraps all along the old man's beat--about sixty of 'em--as well as side-
shows with other generals and columns. Van Zyl told 'im of a big beat he'd
worked on a column a week or so before I'd joined him.
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