He was especially immaculate this Thursday. I guessed he must be taking at least three ladies out that evening. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. “_Three_, little one, this hot night? Winter time, yes, a man can stand a crowd about him, but not to-night. No. To-night, little one, I take but one lady. It allows for more circulation of air. And you will be that One?” The Greek this hot Thursday became especially friendly. He twirled his heavy black mustache and carried on an animated broken-English conversation most of the afternoon. Incidentally, he sent over one ice coffee with thick cream and two frosted chocolates. The little Spaniard next to him, he who served pies and ice cream and more amazing desserts—he, too, became very friendly. There was nothing the least fresh about the little Spaniard. He mostly leaned on his counter, in moments of lull in trade, and when I so much as looked his way, he sighed heavily. Finally he made bold to converse. I learned that he had been two years in this country, eight months at his present job. When I asked him how he spent his off time, he replied in his very broken English that he knew nobody and went nowhere. “It is no pleasure to go alone.” He rooms with an American family on the East Side. They are very nice. For some years he had been in the printing trade in South America; there was something to a job like that. But in New York he did not know enough English to be a printer, and so, somehow, he found himself dishing pies and ice cream at our hotel. Later on that day he asked me, “Why are you so happy?” Indeed I was very cheerful and made no secret of it. I had sung every song I knew and then whistled them all as I worked. But Schmitz, who surely had never smiled in all his life, could stand it no longer. “You better not make so much noise,” he said. “You see, it's dis vay—” Poor Schmitz, he had a miserable time of it that afternoon. For my expressions of contentment with the world had spread. Unconsciously a chef would whistle a bit here as he mixed his gravy ingredients, another there as he minced chicken, yet another in still another direction as he arranged a bowl of vegetables. Schmitz's head swirled first in one direction, then in another. Aching he was to reduce the universe to his perpetual state of gloom. But chefs he stood in awe of. He dared silence only me, and every so often I forgot. So the Spaniard asked me why I was so happy. I had no reason. Only a great multitude of reasons why there was no excuse to be anything else, but I did not go into that. He would know, though. “What did you do last night?” “Ho!” I laughed at him, “rode home on the top of a bus!”