"Yes, and what do you think that daughter of mine said to me the other day? It seems they have to make a great show of jewelry in the second play--what's the name of it--'Mrs. Tinkleton'? Mazie's '_Mrs. Tinkleton_,' and she's going to pile on all her own and her mother's too. So she comes to me: 'Oh, papa, wouldn't it be nice if we could have a real tiara? We've got to fix ma's necklace to look like one, but I think those little coronets they have at Tiffany's are just too utterly sweet.' That's the way the girls and boys talk nowadays, Doctor, 'too utterly too,' 'too intensely all but,'--can't understand half the gibberish they're saying; but I grasped the meaning of _that_! 'Why, good heavens, my child,' I said, 'do you think I'm _made_ of money? There's your mother's necklace cost me thirty-five hundred--the papers made it five thousand, but you know, Doctor, they always blow around and talk big--not so very long ago, not more than two years, I believe, and now _you_ want a tiara.' 'Well, papa, you know you said ma's necklace was just bought out of that rise in Phosphate, and it was like getting it for nothing, and you'd never miss the money because the dividends were so much more than you had expected. Won't something else take a rise?' And in fact, Doctor," continued Colonel Pallinder, pulling at his goatee with a ruefully comic grin, "she rather had me there. It was just as she said, the stock having gone up beyond my wildest expectations. I realised treble what I'd been looking for, and I always like to make my wife some little gift when anything of that sort happens. But a tiara at Tiffany's! I couldn't quite go _that_. Must you be going? Well, good-bye. When you feel like looking into Phosphate a little farther, drop in. I've some figures I think would interest you." Doctor Vardaman took his way from the Turner Building, walking fast in a brown study; such was his preoccupation that twenty steps from the entrance he collided with a young man carrying a green cloth bag, weighted with books or papers, heading for the stairs. "Hello, Doctor!" he began to apologise. "I didn't know it was you. Why, it's great to see you down here. Come up and take a look at my office." "I've just been up in the building, Harvey," said the old gentleman, recognising him. "I ought to be home sitting down to my luncheon this minute. Huddesley would discharge me if I were not on time. I went up to see Ogden about those signboards on Richmond Avenue." He paused and then some indefinable feeling prompted him to add: "Fine office Colonel Pallinder has, hasn't he? The building is certainly very complete and well-equipped; you ought to have seen the two-story frame shanty where I first hung out my shingle. It was over a grocery with an outside stairs leading up to it."