I think my boarding-house friends rather annoyed Mrs. Radigan. She asked me who they were, and when I told her she raised her eyebrows. She said with a sigh that we should be just as nice to queer people as to anybody else. Then she gave a beaming bow to one of her husband's customers, and got a beaming salute in return, with a cold glance from the customer's wife. Several other customers spoke to her. Altogether she is getting along swimmingly. But the great event of the evening was after Radigan had won in the class for spike-teams, and he brought up Bobbie Q. Williegilt, and introduced him. You should have seen the stir in the surrounding boxes. It seemed that young Williegilt wanted to buy Samson and Delilah. Mrs. Radigan would not part with them for anything till Mr. Williegilt actually got into the box alongside of her. Then she sparred with him in smiling whispers for a half-hour, and in the end let him have the pair for a song. Meantime the sketch-artists were hovering around in multitudes, and after Williegilt left us, three other club fellows came of their own accord and talked stocks to Mrs. Radigan and her sister. All our pictures were in the paper this morning. CHAPTER III _A Week-end at Westbury_ I am just back from the Radigans'. To-night I am going to dine at a dairy restaurant, and for some evenings to come, I fear, the performance must be repeated. But to move in society costs, everybody knows that, and the only reason everybody does not join the mad whirl is that there is a difference of opinion as to whether or not the income compensates for the output. For me it is a necessity, as I am in a business that widens with your circle of rich friends, and, like the champagne agent, I must have social position to be a real success. I do not think I should have gone to Westbury from pure love of adventure, but the Radigans are a good speculation. They are among the outside securities in the polite market and are likely to go away over par and be admitted to the floor or to be quoted at one-eighth. The very next day after I sat in their box at the horse-show I received a note from Mrs. Radigan. It was written on beautiful note-paper bearing the family crest, a tandem rampant. It struck me that it would be more appropriate to have a pool-room rampant, emblematic of Radigan _père_, but after all in New York time goes so fast that the performances of the first generation are quickly whirled out of the mind of the second. So under the tandem rampant came the summons to what the good woman termed a "weak-end house-party," a name strangely fitting to my case. The real-estate market has been so active of late that I could not go down on Friday but had to land myself at Westbury on Saturday afternoon, to be met at the station by my hostess with a coach and four and driven home in great state.