Raymond S. Spears

“ Pronto the Jack, driven from pillar to post during many years, with memories of nights out on bleak, cold prairies, and anxious hours in the summer camps of people in the mountains, and with the nerve-wrack of hasty journeys up and down the freight, passenger, and other train by stages and in automobiles, by wagons and on foot, years that had been mere camping ages, now settled down to rest in the delights that he had found in the banker's bungalow—the very banker, at that, whose stacks of currency he had raided so successfully. ”

“ Gas companies don't like to offend bankers. They wish to have things and as regards bankers precisely right, and in strict accordance with the well-known finalities of arithmetics, meters, and other indisputable affairs. In this case the meter reader was shown his own record and he was surprised. He had been told that the season was closed as regards Banker Esquelle's bungalow—and yet he had recorded from that meter, a reading that had, so to speak, made the owner's hair stand on end. ”

“ Why not bake one's own pies, and make one's own hashes and soups and all manner of roadside grub?
Pronto the Jack, as he stirred and mixed, baked and invented, kept the kitchen hot. If it was a cold day he burned the gas under the big water boiler till the whole building lost its chill. He dared not, of course, build a fire in any of the fireplaces, but there were two gas heaters, and he used these, full blast, on a chill day or two, though the hot-water boiler was enough for ordinary cool occasions. ”