For it wasn’t often that Teddie was as excited as she found herself that morning, just as it wasn’t often that she had turned to give ponderable thought to the question of armor-plate. But it loomed up before her as a serious matter, this commandeering of a clever young attorney to her side of the case, and she felt the need of not producing an unfavorable impression on Gerry. Yet even after she had unearthed Gerry’s aerial office-suite in that seldom explored warren of industry known as Nassau Street, she found the attorney in question not quite so accessible as she had anticipated. For she was compelled to send in a card, and cool her heels in an outer room, and even after being admitted to the royal presence had to wait for a further minute or two while Gerry instructed an altogether unnecessarily attractive stenographer as to the procedure in manifolding a somewhat dignified array of documents. He seemed still preoccupied, in fact, as he seated Teddie in a chair at his desk-end and absently took her muff and put it down and motioned away a secretarial-looking intruder and crisply asked just what he could do for her. Teddie found it hard to begin. She made two false starts, in fact, before she was able to begin. And then she refused to be further intimidated by the paraded professional dignity of a person who’d once helped her paint zebra-stripes on a Jersey cow. “Gerry, do you know Raoul Uhlan?” she found herself quite casually inquiring. Gerry pondered the question for a moment. He was really thinking, all the time, how extraordinarily lovely Teddie could look in blue-fox. “He’s a man whom I have the privilege of not knowing,” was Gerry’s retarded but none the less satisfactory reply. “Why do you ask?” “Because he’s suing me for twenty-five thousand dollars,” was Teddie’s altogether unexpected announcement. Gerry, however, seemed determined to remain immobile. “Not for breach of promise?” he asked, with an air of diffidence. “No; it’s for what I suppose you’d call breach of the peace,” explained his client. “What did you do?” inquired Gerry, with vivid but secret memories of the Nero incident. “I had his nose thumped,” acknowledged Teddie with vigor. “Why?” asked Gerry, wondering why his mind kept straying back to one-eyed Russian rats. Teddie hesitated. It wasn’t an easy thing to talk about. That was a lesson she had already learned. But Gerry was different. He was one of her own world and one of her own set, and he’d look at the thing in the right way, in the only way. “Why?” he repeated, secretly astounded by this new mood of humility in which he found Teddie Hayden immersed. “Because he tried to kiss me,” acknowledged Teddie, meeting Gerry’s unwavering gaze. “Fine!” said Gerry, as cool as a cucumber. “But who did the thumping?” “A prize-fighter by the name of Dorgan—Gunboat Dorgan.” “Better still,” calmly agreed her interlocutor, “for that implies it was a genuine professional thumping.”