"Because, fair lady, Fromkin wouldn't let me get in with a crowbar.
He'll never be able to pronounce his t's right, and when he's dressed
up he looks like a 'bus-boy at Mouquin's, but he can see a bluff
farther than I can throw one--and that's somewhere beyond the horizon,
as you'll admit. Talk it over with us after dinner then?"

Emma McChesney was regarding the plump, pink, eager face before her
with keen, level, searching eyes.

"Yes," she said slowly, "I will."

"Cafe? We'll have a bottle--"

"No."

"Oh! Er--parlor?"

Mrs. McChesney smiled. "I won't ask you to make yourself that
miserable. You can't smoke in the parlor. We'll find a quiet corner in
the writing-room, where you men can light up. I don't want to take
advantage of you."

[Illustration: "'Not that you look your age--not by ten years!'"]

Down in the writing-room at eight they formed a strange little group.
Ed Meyers, flushed and eager, his pink face glowing like a peony,
talking, arguing, smoking, reasoning, coaxing, with the spur of a fat
commission to urge him on; Abel Fromkin, with his peculiarly pallid
skin made paler in contrast to the purplish-black line where the razor