She sat down opposite, breathing deeply outward, spreading her napkin out
across her lap.

"It was Edwin coming in from school and getting me worked up with his talk
about--about--"

"What?"

"Nothing. Edwin, run out and bring papa the paprika to take the burnt taste
out. I turned all the cuffs on your shirts to-day, Harry."

"Lordy! if you ain't fixing at one thing, you're fixing another."

"Anything new?"

He was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of
his spoon.

"News! In A. E. Unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from
the ledger to even smell news."

"I see Goldfinch & Goetz failed."

"Could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show
written in verse. That same show boiled down to good Forty-second Street
lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like Alma Zitelle to lift
it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. A war
spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of
show-girl battalions, and a figure like Alma Zitelle's for the Goddess of