“Oh, Freeman will take you on,” replied Henderson easily. “But he never does anything important without consulting his wife--one of his eccentricities. My own system is to go ahead and tell Maybelle afterward, being careful, of course, to conceal my mistakes.” “You haven’t changed a bit,” laughed Bruce. “I wish I could view the world as chipperly as you do.” “My dear Bruce”--with his forefinger Henderson swept Storrs’s breakfast check to his own side of the table with a single gesture--“never try to view the whole world at one glance; it’s too damned big. All I see at present on this suffering, sinning planet is a Plantagenet runabout with Maybelle and me rolling through fields of asphodel. Everything else is superfluous. My fellow creatures simply don’t exist except as prospects for the Plantagenet.” “Oh, rot! You’re the most unselfish biped I ever knew!” “Superficially, yes; but it’s all on the surface. Let’s go out and plant our feet firmly upon the city.” He led the way to his car and drove to the Plantagenet salesroom and garage. A young woman whom he introduced as Miss Ordway apparently ran the whole establishment. Henderson said that she did. He sat down at his desk and signed, without reading, a pile of letters which she had written the day before, talking to her meantime, not of business, but of a novel he had given her to read. Her attempts to interest him in the fact that one of the salesmen wanted his assistance in rounding up a certain difficult customer were provocative only of scornful comments, but when she handed him a memorandum of an appointment with the prospect at ten o’clock the next morning, he meekly thrust the paper into his pocket and said all right; he’d see what he could do. Miss Ordway was already busy with other matters; she seemed to make due allowance for her employer’s peculiarities. “This girl’s mighty firm with me,” he said in a tone perfectly audible to Miss Ordway. “A cruel tyrant; but she really does get some work out of me.” He sat on the edge of his desk as he talked over the extension telephone. Bruce inferred that he was speaking to Mrs. Freeman, and it was evident from his tone that Bud had not exaggerated in speaking of his intimacy with the architect and his wife. “Maybelle’s pushing the pill somewhere and won’t be back for a week. This being Friday, I’d like to be invited to your shanty for the week-end.... Ah! That’s nice of you. And may I bring a little friend?... Oh, a man, of course! And list, Dale, he’s an architect--a Tech grad and everything pretty, and I want Bill to take him on--see? Nice boy and perishing for a job. You fix it for me--that’s the girl!... Oh! my friend isn’t fussy; we’ll both sleep on the grass.... What? Yes; I’ll bring some poison; my pet bootlegger broke through the entanglements yesterday.” “All set,” he remarked as he hung up the receiver. “Mighty nice girl, Dale.”