"He has fine traits, too. Big ones. His word is his bond. He has business foresight and integrity, but somehow it is his little meannesses. I remember once in my father's house he took a thrashing for something outrageous he was not guilty of, because he had promised some youngster across the way he would shield him, come what might, and somehow I thought it pretty fine of him. But another time he let me take a thrashing for something he had done and stood by without opening his mouth. It is those indescribable smallnesses in his make-up. Once when I was in favor of branching out and producing a legitimate three-act play which I happened to run across--a rare thing from the French--he--well, I won't go into it--but this thing--to-night--that bauble of my mother's--it--it's the climax of a lifetime of such flea bites--a trifle hardly worth the mentioning, and yet--it's the most utter--the most damnable--" There was a half crash of his clenched hand among the silver and a rise of suffusing red up out of the white of his soft collar. "I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to let you in for any more of it. I'm sorry. And after you were gracious enough to come alone, too. Come, here is to making this little party a gay one." He held up his glass. "Here's to the shining child." "Oh!" she cried, and drank quickly. "Like it?" "Not much. It burns." "You should see your eyes." "You should see hers." "Whose?" "My child's." "Do you know what I should have done in your husband's place?" "What?" "Harnessed you, too, but to a moonbeam." "I once knew a man to whom I never spoke ten words in all my life, and yet I always imagined he might have talked to me like that--not literally--not in terms of tin dippers." "Of what, you queer, queer girl?" "Now I know of whom you remind me! An old school-teacher I once had. Odd." "I would never have let you slip my harness through." "And have deprived the Amusement Enterprise Company of my austere services!" "You've been invaluable. Ninety per cent of your judgments have been ninety-nine per cent there!" "Luck." "Luck nonsense! Judgment isn't horseshoe-shaped."