The

The Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorn.

Time for a story from R.H. Davis.

This one called Gallagher, a newspaper story.

We had had so many office boys before Gallagher came among us

that they began to lose the characteristics of individuals

and became merged in a composite photograph of small boys,

to whom we applied the generic title of

"'Here you, or you, boy.'

We had had sleepy boys, and lazy boys, and bright, smart boys, who became so familiar

on so short an acquaintance that we were forced apart with them to save our own self-respect.

They generally graduated into district messenger boys, and occasionally returned to us in blue

coats with nickel-plated buttons and patronized us.

But Gallagher was something different from anything we'd experienced before.

Gallagher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness.

"'He wore perpetually on his face a happy and knowing smile,

"'as if you and the world in general were not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were,

"'and his eyes, which were very black and very bright,

"'snapped intelligently at you like those of a little black and tan terrier.

All Gallagher knew had been learnt on the streets, not a very good school in itself, but one that turns out very knowing scholars,

and Gallagher had attended both morning and evening sessions.

...