He smiled his way through school, graduated, and went into his father's printing office as a matter of course. He worked there six or eight months, and left because he could not earn anything either for himself or for his father. The old man hardly missed him until, some months later, he learned that Lanny was working in a billiard room. He took the boy to the woodshed and Lanny knocked him down, not unkindly but firmly, and the old man cursed him in good, round, Old Testament phrases, and disowned him then and there. It did not worry Lanny in the least. He simply declined to take any stock in the curse or the casting off, and probably old P. K. himself soon forgot it. Lanny continued to live at home. He worked in Dan Reilly's saloon. All told he worked for Dan Reilly three weeks. Two weeks he swept out the place, polished brasses and glasses and did odd jobs. One week he stood behind the bar. One week was enough of it. The week was in August, and Dan Reilly's saloon was on the sunny side of the street; there was no hotter place in Riverbank on a sunny August afternoon, and Lanny simply threw up the job on account of the discomfort. The one week, however, was enough; he was tagged. He was “old crank Welsh's son, the bartender fellow.” Lanny loafed awhile, and then the _Eagle_ planned and put to press the first town directory of Riverbank, and during the preparation of the book Lanny found a place in the _Eagle_ rooms setting type. There he remained. The typesetters were an easy-going lot; the side door of the composing room opened on an alley, and Dan Reilly's saloon was just across the alley. The little printer's devil was kept busy on hot days running back and forth with a tin beer pail. The _Eagle_ was a morning paper, and between the blowing of the shrill six o'clock whistle and the time when the reporters turned in their late copy the printers were in the habit of sitting in the alley near the street, eating a snack, sipping beer and teasing the girls who passed. It was nothing particularly bad, but it was sufficiently different from what the bank clerks and counter-jumpers did to impress some Riverbankers with the idea that the printers were a bad lot. Thus Lanny grew up.