- Grandma Lausch gets Augie a job soliciting business for man named Sylvester.
- The boy is now 12.
- Eager to cut corners, Augie disposes the bills down sewers or hands them to kids instead of fixing them on the neighbors' front doors.
- Simon is sent to work as a bellhop at a hotel.
- Augie helps out a friend with his newspaper route, having switched jobs.
- He moves in with the Coblins. Anna Coblin is his mother's cousin.
- George has an outburst seeing his brother leave in the car.
- Anna's son Howard had run away, lying about his age to join the Marine Corps.
- She's very protective of her son's reputation and possessions.
- Catching Augie playing his saxophone, she scolds him as if he'd stolen the instrument.
- Anna's brother goes by the name Five Properties. He drives a dairy truck.
- He brings Augie with him on some of his runs and has the boy assist him hustle empty cases.
- Anna receives a picture from her son, who's apparently shacking up with two native girls.
- Hyman Coblin, her husband, spends his time eating, attending carrier meetings, working his routes, playing the stock market, and playing poker.
- The Colbins are generous with Augie. They have money.
- Back at his own home, Augie takes pride in being a wage-earner and answers Grandma Lausch's prying questions about the Coblins: whether Anna still cries at her runaway son and whether Five Properties still intends to marry an American girl.
- She ridicules the idea that Augie could be learning anything important that she hadn't already made a point to teach him. She seems nice.
- Back with the Colblins, Augie accompanies Hyman on one of his routes. They do the deliveries, come home for food, and then head out again for collections.
- Anna wants Augie to marry her daughter Friedl.
- Perhaps related, perhaps not, Anna sees to it that Augie gets religious instruction.
- She doesn't abridge the stories.