Read these lines: "I didn t, said Joe, until to-night. And I wouldn t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I have been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks." What does this speech reveal?

1. He explains how he learned the truth: he himself sent up the oil and cotton waste that dressed her burn. 2. To send it up he must have been below, in the engine-room of that same building. 3. The last sentence says so plainly, that he had been firing the engine in that laundry for two weeks. 4. Two weeks is the same span over which he claimed to be selling pictures, so his own account was invented too. 5. A hidden job in the same place is option D. 6. Option C is ruled out by the first three words, since he did not know until that night. 7. Option A gives the news to someone else, but he worked it out from what he had done himself. _Source: O. Henry, The Four Million (1906), public domain_