"Very well; ask the cook. About dinners--I think I'd better wait until I see how I'm coming out. Dinners don't matter so much, any way, because they come after I'm through work." Don ate his breakfast in the dining-room before the open fire, as his father used to do. In smoking-jacket and slippered feet, he enjoyed this as a rare luxury--even this matter of breakfasting at home, which until now had been merely a negative detail of routine. When he had finished he drew his chair closer to the flames and lighted a cigarette. He had been cutting down on cigarettes. He had always bought them by the hundred; he was now buying them by the box. Until this week he never realized that they represented money. He was paying now twenty-five cents for a box of ten; and twenty-five cents, as he had learned in the restaurant in the alley, was a sum of money with tremendous possibilities. It would buy, for one thing, five egg sandwiches; and five egg sandwiches would keep a man from being uncomfortably hungry a good many hours. Thus a quarter, from being merely an odd piece of loose change, took on a vital, tangible character of its own. Translated into smokes, it gave a smoke a new value. He had started in to make a box of cigarettes last a day; but he was now resolved to make them last two days. This allowed him one after each meal and two in the evening. If at first he had considered this a hardship, he was beginning to appreciate the fact that it had its compensating advantages. This morning, for instance, he felt that he had never tasted such good tobacco in his life. Like his breakfast, it was a pleasure to be prolonged--to give his thought to. He smoked slowly and carefully and keenly. With his head against the back of his chair, he watched the white cloudlets curl upward after he had inhaled their fragrance. This was no dull habit indulged in automatically. In this moment of indulgence his thoughts turned to Miss Winthrop. It was nearing twelve, and perhaps this had something to do with it. He was going to miss that luncheon hour. He had come to look forward to it as quite the most interesting event of the day. From his comfortable position before the fire, he wondered why. It was impossible to say she had any definite physical attractions, although her eyes were not bad. They piqued a man's curiosity, those eyes. One remembered them. That was true also of her mouth. Don had no very definite notion of its exact shape, but he remembered how it surprised one by changing from the tenderness of a young girl's mouth to the firmness of a man's a dozen times in the course of a few minutes' conversation. It was quarter-past twelve. If he had known her telephone number he would have called her up now, just to say "Hello." He would be taking a chance, however; for, as likely as not, she would inquire what he was doing, and would, he felt sure, scold him for having so late a breakfast.