"I have a little ready cash I could help you out with, if you will let me offer it," he ventured, embarrassed to find slight alternate waves of heat flushing his face. The borrowing and the lending of money were not unknown by any means in Mr. Lamb's set. They asked each other for fifty dollars with perfect nonchalance, got it and paid it back with equal unconcern, and no man among them had been known to forget. Mr. Wallingford accepted quite gracefully. "Really, if you don't mind," said he, "five hundred or so would be quite an accommodation for a couple of days." Mr. Lamb gulped, but it was only a sort of growing pain that he had. It was difficult for him to keep up with his own financial expansion. "Certainly," he stammered. "I'll go right down and get it for you. The bank closes at three. I have only a half hour to make it." "I'll go right with you," said Mr. Wallingford, asking no questions, but rightly divining that his Lamb kept no open account. "Wait a minute. I'll make you out a note--just so there'll be something to show for it, you know." He hurriedly drew a blank from his pocket, filled it in and arose from the table. "I made it out for thirty days, merely as a matter of business form," stated Mr. Wallingford as they walked to the elevator, "but, as soon as I put those bonds on the market, I'll take up the note, of course. I left the interest in at six per cent." "Oh, that was not necessary at all," protested Mr. Lamb. The sum had been at first rather a staggering one, but it only took him a moment or two to get his new bearings, and, if possible, he held his head a trifle higher than ever as he walked out through the lobby. On the way to the bank the capitalist passed the note over to his friend. "I believe that's the right date; the twenty-fifth, isn't it?" "The twenty-fifth is right," Mr. Lamb replied, and perfunctorily opened the note. Then he stopped walking. "Hello!" he said. "You've made a mistake. This is for a thousand." "Is that so? I declare! I so seldom draw less than that. Well, suppose we let it go at a thousand." Time for gulping was passed. "All right," said the younger man, but he could not make the assent as sprightly as he could have wished. In spite of himself the words drawled. Nevertheless, at his bank he handed in his savings-book and the check, and, thoroughly permeated by the atmosphere in which he was now moving, he had made out the order for eleven hundred dollars. "I needed a little loose change myself," he explained, as he put a hundred into his own pocket and passed the thousand over to Mr. Wallingford. Events moved rapidly now. Mr. Wallingford that night sent off one hundred and fifty dollars to his wife.