"Ben Gartz is an unusual boy." (Boy!) "He was a wonderful son to his mother.... I'd like to know what you have against him."
"Against him! Why, not a thing, mama. Only——"
Lottie hesitated. Then, regrettably, she giggled. "Only he has never heard of Alice in Wonderland, and he thinks the Japs are a wonderful little people but look out for 'em!, and he speaks of summer as the heated term, and he says 'not an iota.'"
"Not an iota!" echoed Mrs. Payson almost feebly.
"Yes. You know—'not an iota of truth in it'; 'not an iota of difference.'"
"Lottie Payson, sometimes I think you're downright idiotic! Alice in Wonderland! The idea! Woman your age! Ben Gartz is a business man."
"Indeed he is—strictly."
"I suppose you'd prefer going around with some young fool like this poet Charley has picked up from behind the delicatessen counter. I don't know what your sister Belle can be thinking of."
Sister Belle was thinking of a number of things, none of them pleasant; and none of them connected with Charley or Charley's poet. Henry Kemp had sold the car—the big, luxurious, swift-moving car. He had hinted that the nine-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard might soon be beyond his means.
"If this keeps up much longer," he had said one day to Charley, "your old dad will be asking you for a job as bundle boy at Shield's." His laugh, as he said it, had been none too robust.