"I'd just been figuring on a new house," he observed, "but I guess I'll have to plan it all over now." He led her to a chair presently, and went back to the window, where he stood until the darkness warned him that it was time to dress for dinner. The meal finished, he sat down to write, tearing up sheet after sheet of paper and crumpling it into the waste basket until far into the night, and later he sent down for a city directory, making out a list of cigar stores, dropping out those that were printed in black-face type; but whatever he did he paused once in a while to turn toward that tiny white garment upon the table and survey it with smiling wonder. In the morning he called upon a job printer of reputation, and then he went again to Ed Nickel's cigar store; but this time he dashed up to the door in a showy carriage drawn by two good horses. The same flabby man sat in the corner playing solitaire as if he had never left off, and the same apathetic young man with the dent in his hat was watching him. The split cigar mold had not yet grown together, though Ed Nickel still held its two parts matched tightly in his left hand. Upon the entrance of Wallingford the magnificent, however, the three graven figures, glancing first upon him and then upon the carriage, inhaled the breath of life. The solitaire player suddenly pushed his cards together and began shuffling them over and over and over and over, though he had not yet exhausted the possibilities of the previous game. The apathetic young man stood up to yawn but changed his mind after he had his mouth open. Ed Nickel bowed, smiled and hurried behind his counter. "What will you take for your business, Mr. Nickel?" asked J. Rufus, throwing a coin on the case and tapping his finger over the box from which he had purchased the cigars the night before. Freshly shaven, he wore a new collar, a new shirt with fine, crisp cuffs, and a new silk lavender tie--also plain new cuff buttons. Ed Nickel's ears heard the astounding question, but Ed Nickel's mind did not grasp it, for Ed Nickel's hand went on mechanically into the case after the designated cigars. It secured the box, it brought it partly out--and then dropped it just inside the sliding door. The hand came out and its fingers twined with those of the other hand. "What did you say?" asked Mr. Nickel's mouth. "How much will you take for your business?" repeated J. Rufus. Mr. Nickel looked slowly around his walls, past the dust-hung wire screen to the dingy back room, under the counter, into the case, over the sparsely filled shelves. "I don't know," he said, his eyes roving back to those of J. Rufus. "Besides the stock and fixtures, there's the good will, the trade I've worked up, and the call for my Nickelfine and the Double Nickel, my leading ten-cent cigar. I'd have to take an invoice to set a price on this business."