“Aha! Interested, are you? Well, young sir, my alternative plan is to find somebody with more common sense and good judgment than your rattle-pated, pig-headed self! That’s my alternative plan.” “Got anybody in view?” “And if I have?” “Go to it! Take my blessing, and stand not on the order of your going to it,—but skittle! You can’t go too fast to suit me!” “You’re an impudent and disrespectful young rascal! Your bringing-up is sadly at fault if it allows you to speak thus to your elders!” “Oh, come off, Uncle Binney! You may be older than I in actual years, but you’ve got to hand it to me on the score of temperamental senescence! Why, you’re a very kid in your enthusiasm for the halls of dazzling light and all that in them is! So, and, by the way, old top, I mean no real disrespect, but I consider it a compliment to your youth and beauty to recognize it in a feeling of camaraderie and good-fellowship. Are we on?” “Yes, that’s all right, son, but can’t your good-fellowship extend itself to the Buns?” “Nixy. Nevaire! Cut out all Bun talk, and I’m your friend and pardner. Bun, and you Bun alone!” A long, steady gaze between the eyes of the young man and the old seemed to convince each of the immutability of this decision, and, with a deep sigh, the Bun promoter changed the subject. “This Gayheart Review, now, Richard,——” he began. “Don’t consider the question settled, Sir Herbert,” said Miss Letitia Prall, with a note of anxiety in her voice, quite unusual to it. “Give me a chance to talk to Ricky alone, and I feel almost certain I can influence his views.” “A little late in the day, ma’am,” Binney returned, shortly. “I have an alternative plan, but if I wait much longer to make use of it, the opportunity may be lost. Unless Richard changes his mind to-day, he needn’t change it at all,—so far as I am concerned.” “Going to organize a Bakery of ex-chorus girls?” asked Bates, flippantly. “Going to persuade them to throw in their fortunes with yours?” A merry, even affectionate smile robbed this speech of all unpleasant effect, and Sir Herbert smiled back. “Not that,” he returned; “I’d be ill fitted to attend to a bakery business with a horde of enchanting damsels cavorting around the shop! No, chorus girls are all right in their place,—which is not in the home, nor yet in a business office.” “That’s true, and I take off my hat to you, Uncle, as a real live business man, with his undivided attention on his work,—in business hours,—and outside of those, his doings are nobody’s business.” “With your leanings toward the fair sex, it’s a wonder you never married,” observed Miss Prall, inquisitively.