"Oh, he and Henry——" Belle said lamely.
Aunt Charlotte spoke up from the silence which now enveloped her more and more. "I suppose there's nothing Henry needs just now more than candy and roses and theatre tickets and one thing and another."
Following these attentions—rather, breaking into the midst of them as they came, thick and fast—the Kemps had Ben Gartz in to dinner. They had had few dinner guests of late. Belle made a very special effort and the dinner was delicious; a thing to tempt Ben's restaurant-jaded appetite. The meat sauce was smooth, rich, zestful; the dressing for the salad properly piquant, but suave; the sweet just light enough to satisfy without cloying. Ben Gartz had become a connoisseur in these things as does your fleshly man who learns late in life of gastronomic delights.
After dinner he and Henry talked business. "Have a cigar, Henry."
"Thanks, but I don't smoke those heavy ones any more. They don't agree with me. Try one of these."
Ben took it, eyed it, tucked it into his vest pocket and lighted one of his own. He rolled it between his lips. He squinted up through the smoke.
"Well now, Kemp, you hold on for awhile longer, will you? There may be something pretty big breaking for you."
"How do you mean, breaking for me?"
"I don't want to say, right now. But I mean—well, I mean in our business. We knew we had a big thing but we didn't know what we really had. Why, it's colossal. There's only me—and Beck and Diblee. Beck's getting pretty old. He's a pioneer among the jewelry manufacturers. Crowding seventy, Beck is. Diblee's all right but he doesn't do for the trade. He hasn't got the trick of mixing. He wears those eyeglasses with a black ribbon, you know, and talks about the east, where he came from, and they get sore, the wholesalers do.... Got any capital, Henry? Not that we need capital, y'understand. Lord no! What we need is brains and business experience and a mixer. I've got all three but say, I can't be everywhere."
As if by magic Henry Kemp's face filled out, became firm where it had sagged, glowed where it had been sallow with the jaundice of discouragement.