to make a social call, all but the made-up bow tie and the oil on the
hair. Some change and sudden!"

"Got a touch of the swelled head, though, hasn't he?" asked Van Cleve.
"I hear he's beginning to pick his assignments already. Refuses to take
society stuff and that sort of thing."

"Oh," said Mallory, "I suppose that comes from his being assigned to a
tea given by the Thatcher Forbes for some foreign celebrity, and asking
to be let off because he'd already been invited there and declined."

"Hello!" exclaimed McHale. "Where does our young bird come in to fly as
high as the Thatcher Forbes? He may look like a million dollars, but is
he?"

"All I know," said Tommy Burt, "is that every Monday, which is his day
off, he dines at Sherry's, and goes in lonely glory to a first-night, if
there is one, afterward. It must have been costing him half of his
week's salary."

"Swelled head, sure," diagnosed Decker, the financial reporter of The
Ledger. "Well, watch the great Chinese joss, Greenough, pull the props
from under him when the time comes."

"As how?" inquired Glidden.

"By handing him a nawsty one out of the assignment book, just to show
him where his hat fits too tight."

"A run of four-line obits," suggested Van Cleve, who had passed a