"A couple of thousand? Why not make it a million?" Howard's demand struck him as being so humorous that he sat down convulsed with laughter. Looking at him stupidly, Howard helped himself to another drink. "It seems I'm a hit," he said with a grin. Underwood by this time had recovered his composure. "So you've done nothing since you left college?" he said. "No," answered Howard. "I don't seem to get down to anything. My ideas won't stay in one place. I got a job as time-keeper, but I didn't keep it down a week. I kept the time all right, but it wasn't the right time," Again raising his glass to his lips, he added: "They're so beastly particular." "You keep pretty good time with that," laughed Underwood, pointing to the whiskey. Howard grinned in drunken fashion. "It's the one thing I do punctually," he hiccoughed. "I can row, swim, play tennis, football, golf and polo as well as anybody, but I'll be damned if I can do anything quite as well as I can do this." "What do you want $2,000 for?" demanded Underwood. "I've got an opportunity to go into business. I want $2,000 and I want it deuced quick." Underwood shrugged his shoulders. "Why don't you go home and ask your father?" he demanded. His visitor seemed offended at the suggestion. "What!" he exclaimed, with comic surprise, "after being turned out like a dog with a young wife on my hands! Not much--no. I've injured their pride. You know father married a second time, loaded me down with a stepmother. She's all right, but she's so confoundedly aristocratic. You know her. Say, didn't you and she--wasn't there some sort of an engagement once? Seems to me I----" Underwood rose to his feet and abruptly turned his back. "I'd rather you wouldn't get personal," he said curtly. Sitting down at a desk, he began to rummage with some papers and, turning impatiently to Howard, he said: "Say, old man, I'm very busy now. You'll have to excuse me." If Howard had been sober, he would have understood that this was a pretty strong hint for him to be gone, but in his besotted condition, he did not propose to be disposed of so easily. Turning to Underwood, he burst out with an air of offended dignity: "Underwood, you wouldn't go back on me now. I'm an outcast, a pariah, a derelict on the ocean of life, as one of my highly respectable uncles wrote me. His grandfather was an iron puddler." With a drunken laugh he went on: "Doesn't it make you sick? I'm no good because I married the girl. If I had ruined her life I'd still be a decent member of society." He helped himself to another drink, his hand shaking so that he could hardly hold the decanter. He was fast approaching the state of complete intoxication. Underwood made an attempt to interfere. Why should he care if the young fool made a sot of himself? The sooner he drank himself insensible the quicker he would get rid of him. "No, Howard," he said; "you'd never make a decent member of society." "P'r'aps not," hiccoughed Howard.