"I love them all," he said, "but I haven't money enough to entertain a
quarter of them. The last time Billie Hicks was up here he smoked
sixteen Invincible cigars. Now, I am very fond of Billie Hicks, but with
cigars at twenty cents apiece I can't afford him more than one Sunday in
a year. He's getting a little cold because I haven't asked him up
since."
"Why don't you buy cheaper cigars? At our grocery store they have some
very nice looking ones at two for five cents," suggested Mrs. Jarley.
"I don't wish to have to move out of the house," said Jarley.
Mrs. Jarley failed to see the connection.
"Very likely you don't," said Jarley; "but if I smoked one of your
two-and-a-half-cent grocery cigars in this house, you'd see the point in
a minute. If you will get me a yard of cotton cloth, and let me put it
in the furnace fire, you'll get a fair idea of the kind of atmosphere
we'd be breathing if I allowed a cigar like that to be lit within fifty
feet of the front door."
"But you can get a good cigar for ten cents, can't you?" Mrs. Jarley
asked.
"Yes--very good," assented Jarley; "but Billie would probably smoke
thirty-two of those, and carry three or four away with him in his
pockets. I'd lose even more that way. It's a singular thing about
friends. They have some conscience about Invincible cigars, but they'll
take others by the handful."
Jarley was also somewhat blue upon this occasion because none of his
inventions--the little things he thought out in his leisure moments, and
out of some of which he had hoped to gain a deal of profit--had been
successful.
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