"When I had all but burned out my main bearings, I phoned her. Maybe you won't believe it--but Marcia was going to phone me that evening. We talked it over. She moved to my flat and got a job." "So?" "We might get married." "She want to?" "She refuses--now. I'm not always certain I want to, myself." He stuck his forefinger into his shoe and tugged at the counter. "And I don't know why. Why I want to marry her. Why I'm uncertain." "How do your--?" I broke that off. But he got it. "My friends think she's swell. You gathered she was good-looking. She's a tall, slender gal with light-brown hair and blue eyes. Quiet. You'd never think--! But I went into that, didn't I? She attended college, in Iowa, for a year--and she likes to read. By that I mean--" "Nobody else--?" "Christ, no. They think she's a working gal--which she is, now: a nice friend of mine." "Someday--" I stopped there--again. "Yes." His face whitened. "A putty-chinned, overweight lodge brother from Keokuk, just tight enough to miss the stony stare and come up with the big hello. It's happened." "I see." "She went home and had hysterics." "Bring her over." Paul looked at me thoughtfully. "You are upset." "Sure. Now. _You_ are. So bring her over. Not tonight--or tomorrow night. I'm busy." "What about lunch tomorrow? She's not working and I can slide out." "Lunch, then. Come around one." The family's very fond of Paul and a good many of us have tried to spoil him. He was one of those irresistible kids--the kind that wears glasses, has braces on his teeth, raises bizarre pets, looks up everything in the encyclopedia, and is always engaged in a project about five years ahead of his current age--so that he is always in deep water and needs help. Everybody helped Paul. When he grew up--through one of the most gangling and precocious adolescences in the history of youth--the aunts, sisters, and female cousins used to argue constantly about his looks. Was he genuinely handsome, did he merely have character in his face, or was he plain ugly but friendly-looking? The argument was never decided. But, at least, he looked better when his eyesight was corrected, the spectacles were abandoned, and the braces had come off his teeth. I walked Paul to the door and pulled out my bill-clip. There were a couple of fifties in it and I gave them to him. Not much else--so--when he'd gone, I wrote a check to cash and phoned for Bill the bellman. He came up and took my check and brought the money back in a few minutes. I gave him fifty cents--knowing it was too much--knowing I had always tipped too much--knowing that I had never cared because I'd been brought up amidst nickel pinchers and because I like to please the people around me--and realizing all of a sudden that I would go right on being extravagant till the day I died which, luckily for my estate, probably wouldn't be far off.