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“‘You’d better keep this yourself,’ says I. ‘We are strangers to you, and you can’t trust everybody you meet. Put your roll back in your pocket,’ says I. ‘And you’d better run along home before some farm- hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you a copper mine.’

“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Whiskers. ‘I guess Little Old New York can take care of herself. I guess I know a man that’s on the square when I see him. I’ve always found the Western people all right. I ask you as a favor, Mr. Peters,’ says he, ‘to keep that roll in your pocket for me. I know a gentleman when I see him. And now let’s have some more beer.’

“In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and snores. Andy looks at me and says: ‘I reckon I’d better stay with him for five minutes or so, in case the waiter comes in.’

“I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And then I came back and sat down at the table.

“‘Andy,’ says I, ‘I can’t do it. It’s too much like swearing off taxes. I can’t go off with this man’s money without doing something to earn it like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle of eczema lotion in his pocket to make it look more like a square deal.’

“‘Well,’ says Andy, ‘it does seem kind of hard on one’s professional pride to lope off with a bearded pard’s competency, especially after he has nominated you custodian of his bundle in the sappy insouciance of his urban indiscrimination. Suppose we wake him up and see if we can formulate some commercial sophistry by which he will be enabled to give us both his money and a good excuse.’

“We wakes up Whiskers. He stretches himself and yawns out the hypothesis that he must have dropped off for a minute. And then he says he wouldn’t mind sitting in at a little gentleman’s game of poker. He used to play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn; and as he was out for a good time, why–and so forth.

“Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a solution to our financial troubles. So we all three go to our hotel further down Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to Andy’s room. I tried once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural Gardens take his five thousand. But no.

“‘Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,’ says he, ‘and oblige. I’ll ask you fer it when I want it. I guess I know when I’m among friends. A man that’s done business on Beekman street for twenty years, right in the heart of the wisest old village on earth, ought to know what he’s about. I guess I can tell a gentleman from a con man or a flimflammer when I meet him. I’ve got some odd change in my clothes –enough to start the game with, I guess.’

“He goes through his pockets and rains $20 gold certificates on the table till it looked like a $10,000 ‘Autumn Day in a Lemon Grove’ picture by Turner in the salons. Andy almost smiled.

“The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down his hand, claims low and jack and big casino and rakes in the pot.

“Andy always took a pride in his poker playing. He got up from the table and looked sadly out of the window at the street cars.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ says the cigar man, ‘I don’t blame you for not wanting to play. I’ve forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess, it’s been so long since I indulged. Now, how long are you gentlemen going to be in the city?’

“I told him about a week longer. He says that’ll suit him fine. His cousin is coming over from Brooklyn that evening and they are going to see the sights of New York. His cousin, he says, is in the artificial limb and lead casket business, and hasn’t crossed the bridge in eight years. They expect to have the time of their lives, and he winds up by asking me to keep his roll of money for him till next day. I tried to make him take it, but it only insulted him to mention it.