"I've sent 'em invitations," said Alvord. "Anything to please the patient. I could tell you a good deal about this, fellows; but 'Gene and I are brothers and closer than brothers; and F. D. and B. goes with me; but it won't hurt anything for you to know that he's got carloads of trouble, and you haven't any of you come within a mile of the mark. He told me all about it the night he got back from New York. I think it will blow over if things can be kept from blowing up instead, for a few days--slumbering volcano--woman scorned--hell's fury, you know; don't ask me any more. But this hiding out won't do." "Well, I should think not," said Slater. "We've got to get him going about as usual or there'll be questions asked and publicity--those red-headed women are pretty vivacious conversationalists when they get mad, and you can't tell what may be pulled off, even if he acts as natural as life." "This supper ought to help some," said Edgington. "It will," said Alvord. "We must make it a hum-dinger. And we must see that he shows himself of tenor at the club and lodge meetings and hops. Why, it's shameful, the way we've let him drop out." And men being above gossip, at this point the meeting dissolved. At the hotel, conference after conference had taken place in the parlor of Professor Blatherwick, and Blodgett and Blatherwick's _Notes_ had been studied out most assiduously. Judge Blodgett and Florian Amidon had spent their days at the counting-house, and an increased force of clerks worked ceaselessly in making up statements and balances showing the condition of the business. Amidon could now draw checks in the name of Brassfield with no more than a dim sense of committing forgery. The banks, however, refused to honor them at first, and the tellers noted the fact that after his return from New York Mr. Brassfield adopted a new style of signature, and wondered at it. Some noticed a change in all his handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the absorbing business of his life. No one understood, however, his sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it. He seemed to be altogether a transformed man. "I am beginning to see through this," said Amidon, referring to the business.