With his back turned, the three lemonade drinkers exchanged pleased smiles. It was too easy! Mr. Daw let them smile, and reposed calmly upon the couch, entirely disinterested. Professional ethics forbade Mr. Daw to interfere with the "trimming" of the jovial Mr. Wallingford, and the instincts of a gentleman, with which, of course, they were all perfectly provided, prevented him from taking any part in that agreeable operation. To his keen amusement the game was very brief--scarcely more than twenty minutes. It was Short-Card Larry who, with a yawn, discovered suddenly how late it was and stopped the game. As he rose to go, young Wallingford, chuckling, was adding a few additional bills to the plethoric roll in his pocket. "What made you chop the game, Larry?" asked Green-Goods Harry in impatient wonder. "We'd ought to strung it along a while. What made you let him have that hundred and fifty so quick?" "Let him!" retorted Larry savagely. "He took it! Twice I gave him aces back to back on my deal, and he turned them down without a bet. On his own deal he bet his head off on a pair of deuces, with not one of us three able to draw out on him; and right there he cops that hundred and fifty himself. He's too fresh!" "Well," said Badger Billy philosophically, "he'll come for more." "Not of mine, he won't," snorted the dexterous one. "I can't do any business against a man that's next. I hope he chokes." "There you go again, letting your temper get the best of you," protested Mr. Phelps, himself none too pleased. "This fresh lollop has coin, and it ought to be ours." "Ought to be? It _is_ ours," growled Larry. "We'll get it if we have to mace him, at noon, on Madison Square." In the meantime J. Rufus was chuckling himself to sleep. He rose at eleven, breakfasted at one, and was dressing and planning to besiege New York upon his own account, when the telephone advised him that Mr. Phelps was down-stairs with a parched throat, and on the way up to get a drink! "Fine business!" exclaimed J. Rufus with a cordiality which had nothing whatever to do with the puzzled expression on his brow. "What'll you have? I'll order it while you're on your way up." "Nothing stronger than a Scotch highball," was the reply, whereupon young Wallingford, as soon as the telephone was clear, ordered the materials therefor. "Fine business," he repeated to himself musingly as he stood with his hand still on the receiver after he had hung it up; "also rough work. This thirst is too sudden." He was still most thoughtful when Mr. Phelps knocked at the door, and had yet more food for contemplation when the caller began talking with great enthusiasm about his thirst, explaining the height and breadth and thickness thereof, its atomic weight, its color and the excellent style of its finish. "If I just had that thirst outside of me where I could get at it, I could make an airship of it," he imaginatively concluded.