"Aint no time for keeping the benches warm I can tell you.... Out of a job, are you?" Wenny nodded. "Up against it?" Wenny got to his feet. "I guess I'll walk along," he said. "Mind if I walk with you?" said the young man jumping up and thrashing his arm about. "Bad onct you let yesself git cold this weather. You don't never git warm agin. Got a flop for the night?" Wenny nodded. They started walking down the path. "I aint yet. I'll git one though. It's too tumble cold out." "Are you flat?" "Like a buckwheat cake." "I mean, haven't you any money?" "Money!" Wenny's companion stopped in his tracks shaking with laughter. "Jumpin' jeeze, that's funny. That sure strikes me funny. Why I aint had a piece of change the size of your little finger for so damn long ..." "How do you make out?" "O, I make out fine, 'xceptin' when my luck goes back on me like today." "Been in Boston long?" "Nope. Tumbled in here 'bout three days ago from Albany. Too cold up there. I aint got the hang of it yet. Bum town, I'd say. Though you can't tell about a town till you learn it." A rolled up newspaper lay on the path before them. The young man without an overcoat made a grab for it, shooting a skinny chapped forearm out of the frayed sleeve of his coat. "Useful things, newspapers," he said as they walked on. Then he turned and looked at Wenny fixedly a minute. "Lost your job?... You aint bummed much, have you? Lost your job?" "I've hardly been out of Boston." They were rounding the dry basin of one of the ponds that was piled with muddy snow from the paths. "Et today?" "Of course.... Look, I've still got a couple of dollars. Suppose you come and have a drink with me. Say, what's your name?" "The guys called me Whitey down where I come from. And say, if you want to set me up to something for Gawd's sake make it a hamburger steak. Honest, I aint et a thing since I been in Boston city." "Gosh, come along. I'll take you to Jake's." "Hell, it don't hurt you not to eat onct you git used to it. I kin go days without eatin' an' never notice it." "Gee, I'm hungry too. I forgot to eat any lunch." In the German restaurant there was a thick smell of beer and fat wurst and sawdust. Whitey took off his cap exposing a closely cropped tow head and sat stiffly on the shiny reddish wooden bench. Wenny ordered beer and hamburger and potatoes of a fat-faced waiter who looked from one to the other out of suspicious pig eyes. "Gee, you're treatin' me white. I guess you're millionaire on the loose." "I wish I was," said Wenny laughing. "No, I just had a fight with my father." "Like me when I left home." "How long have you been bumming round like this?" "'Bout a year an a half." "Where do you come from?" "Perkinville, a little jerkwater town back in South Dakota." "Good beer, isn't it?" "I'll tell the world it is.... So you had a fallin' out with the old man, did ye too?" "I sure did." "Did he trun a flatiron after you?"