"I am beginning to meet his name in print quite frequently," pursued Bingham, serenely. "Is he the same Truesdale Marshall who has a collection of water-colors in the current exhibition at the Art Institute?" "I believe so," responded the old man, with some lack of warmth. "Is it the same Truesdale Marshall who sang last Friday at the residence of Mrs. Granger S. Bates, for the benefit of--of--" David Marshall smiled broadly. "Our Jennie--what a girl she is coming to be! That Lunch Club is one of her pet notions; she pushes it at all times--in season and out." "She seems to be pushing it to good purpose just now," commented Bingham. "By-the-way, I suppose she is the same Miss Marshall I danced with last night. She sat in one of the upper places, so to speak, but she was induced to go down on the floor for a few minutes." "Well, Bingham," said Marshall, "I knew you went to that sort of thing once in a while, and I thought that that in itself was a good deal for a man like you; but for you to dance there--I shouldn't have imagined your doing it; well, no." "I didn't but once," responded the other, apologetically. "Still, if you're going to get along in this world, you've got to be of it. Besides, I thought"--_argumentum ad hominem_--"that she was entitled to show that dress; hers was described, too." "Um!" said her father, soberly, with a sidelong glance towards his pigeon-holes. "But no picture." "Well, let that pass," responded Bingham, with a slight touch of pique. "Is this the Miss Marshall who read lately at the Fortnightly?" "Yes." "Is it the same one who is announced to lecture at Hull House on the Russian novelists?" "See here, Bingham!" The old man wheeled about sharply in his chair, and fastened a keen scrutiny upon the other's face. Bingham had never talked to him like this before; he had never seemed so light-minded, so slanted towards the jocular. "See here, Bingham, what are you driving at?" Bingham fitted himself solidly into the curved back of the chair, and laid his hands out ponderously upon its arms. He had something to say, and he wondered how best he might say it. "Marshall is twenty years older than I am," he thought, as his eye traversed the shelves of nutmegs and orris-root and lit upon the discolored awnings over the way, "and I must be careful. I'm young to him, of course; but I can't ask the indulgence due to a boy. How shall I work it?"