“For the love of Pete, man! how much sleep do you want?” snorted Jim. “What are you trying to do, forget your sorrows? Here it is after nine o’clock, and I’ve already had my breakfast and a shave. Get a wiggle on and see what it is to be a popular hero.”
“Stop your joshing,” muttered Joe, sleepily.
“Josh nothing,” Jim came back at him. “If you’ll just open those liquid orbs of yours and give this room the once over, you’ll see whether I’m joshing or not.”
This stirred Joe’s curiosity and he sat up in bed with a jerk.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as he saw the room littered with a mass of boxes and packages that covered every available spot on chairs and tables and overflowed to the floor. “Where did you get all this junk? Going to open a department store?”
“I guess you’ll be able to if they keep on coming,” returned Jim. “I’ve been signing receipts for express packages until I’ve got the writer’s cramp. And there’s a pile of letters and telegrams, and there’s a bunch of reporters down in the lobby waiting for an interview with your Royal Highness, and--but what’s the use? Get up, you lazy hulk, and get busy.”
“It surely looks as though it were going to be my busy day,” grinned Joe, as he jumped out of bed and rushed to the shower.
He shaved and dressed in a hurry and then ate a hasty breakfast, after which he saw the reporters.
Those clever and wideawake young men greeted him with enthusiasm and overwhelmed him with questions that ranged from the date of his birth to his opinion on the outcome of the World Series. They knew that their papers would give them a free hand in the matter of space, and they were in search not of paragraphs but of columns from the idol of the hour.
“You look limp and wilted, Joe,” laughed Jim, as they went back to their rooms.
“It’s no wonder,” growled Joe. “Those fellows got the whole sad story of my life. They hunted out every fact and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat. They turned me inside out. The only thing they forgot to ask was when I got my first tooth and whether I’d ever had the measles. And, oh, yes, they didn’t find out what was my favorite breakfast food. But now let’s get busy on these parcels and see what’s in them.”
“What’s in them is plenty,” prophesied Jim, “and these are only the few drops before the shower.”