"Oh no," said Jarley, gritting his teeth in his determination not to follow his mad impulse to jump on Mr. Baker's shoulders and clamor for a picky-back ride. "No; I don't mind little things like that much." Here he stood on his right leg, as he had done before breakfast, and began to hop. "Hurt your foot?" queried Mr. Baker. Jarley seized at the suggestion with all the despairing vigor of a drowning man clutching at a rope. "Yes; a little, but not enough to mention," he said; whereupon, much to his relief, Mr. Baker turned away and went back to his own room. "This will never do," Jarley moaned to himself when his partner had gone. "If one of my clients should come in--" Then he stopped and grinned like a mischievous lad. He had caught sight of an old water-meter that had been used as an exhibit in a case he had once tried against the city in behalf of an inventor, who had been led to believe that the water board would adopt his patent and compel every householder to buy one for the registration of water consumed. What fun it would be to take that apart, he thought, and thinking thus was enough to set him about the task. He locked his door, moved the strange-looking contrivance out into the middle of the room, and tried to unscrew the top of it with his eraser. The delicate blade of this improvised screw-driver snapped off in an instant, whereupon Jarley tried the scissors, with similar results. After a half-hour of this he gave up the idea of taking the meter apart, but his soul immediately became possessed of another idea, which was to see if it worked. The pursuit of this brought him the most deliriously joyful sensations; and for an hour he devoted himself to filling the machine up with water drawn from a faucet at one side of his room, and poured into the meter from a drinking-glass. It was not until the hour was up that he observed that the water after passing through the meter came out upon the carpet, and it is probable that even then he would not have noticed it had not the tenants below sent up to inquire if there was not something wrong with the water-pipes overhead.