“Is it?” said Tommy. “I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both begin with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a tea party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with a T and end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. Broadway success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't forget you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you out in front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! Author!' yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the obscure and humble person who set in motion the train of thought that led to my writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to you.'” “Shut up!” said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the rough towel. “Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes.” And as Tommy began to dress he regarded that person darkly. “You're a brilliant wag, you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the _Despatch_ keep your best things out of print, you splattering supermudhen of journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any more job than a kaiser.” And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic maze of his garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter disgustedly, “Bubbles!” Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked exactly like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated collar advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he enjoyed talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to turn his ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as the mad wags who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their sayings across accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad waggery. “Speaking of bubbles,” he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement, “there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously than you do, Jack.”