Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he
found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or
go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a
thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged
woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In
the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But
he grows flabby where she grows lean.

Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday noon at
Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly enjoyed the
home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk
business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the
old-fashioned kind, beginning:

"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your raw hides and leathers."

But Ben and George didn't want to "take, f'rinstance, your raw hides and
leathers." They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf,
or politics or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who
prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a
profession--a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's
clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great
criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would
listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first
chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at
their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with
good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by
almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who
is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and