"She is a stunner," he declared, with the faintest suggestion of a smirk, "and carries herself like a queen. She wears a fur coat that cost not less than six or seven hundred dollars, and not a woman in this town has such diamonds. We all went to the theater last night, and there were more opera glasses turned on our box than on the stage. I tell you, our friend Wallingford has the best there is, in women, as well as in wine, and as for wealth, he could buy and sell us all." "I believe it," said Jens Jensen. "But why should such a rich man go into a little business?" "Because," said Doctor Feldmeyer, with profound wisdom, "a rich man never overlooks a thousand per cent. like this. That's why they are rich. Why, this man's daily expenses would keep every one of us. He had fine apartments at the hotel himself, but when his wife came he got the best in the house--four fine, big rooms. Last night after the theater he took me to his own dining room, and we had a supper that cost not less than thirty or forty dollars!" Such gossip would go far to establishing any man's reputation for wealth, especially among such simple natured people as these, and it was quite certain that Otto Schmitt and Henry Vogel and Emil Kessler would hear every scrap of it. Had Doctor Feldmeyer heard the conversation that took place after he left the Wallingford suite the night before, his report might have been slightly different. "Well, Jim," Mrs. Wallingford had asked with a trace of anxiety, "what are you doing this time?" "The United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey," he replied with a laugh. "You remember how they turned me down a long time ago when I tried to sell them a patent?" She nodded. "You made me go right to them and try what you called 'straight business,' and I got what was coming to a mollycoddle. I'm going to sell them a patent this time, but in the right way, and for a good, big round chunk." "Whose patent?" she inquired. "What's the difference?" he queried, and laughed again. "It serves him right for being an inventor." She did not laugh with him, however. She sat in frowning disquiet, and he watched her curiously. "What's the matter with you?" he presently complained. "It used to be enough for you that I could not be jailed for having a few dollars." "We're nearly middle-aged, Jim," she replied, turning to him soberly. "What will we be like when we are old?" "Cheer up, Fanny, and I will tell you the worst!" he declaimed. "You'll be gray and I'll be bald!" She was compelled to laugh herself, and gave up the idea of serious conversation with him, for that time at least.