The sandwiches paraded up and down the Avenue sidewalk, never once going off the block. As two of the artists passed each other they saluted—the sandwich union's sign a rigid forefinger drawn quickly across the throat with a decapitating sweep: lambs expecting execution in the world's vast abattoir. The answering sign was a quick mouthward motion of the rigid thumb to represent the assuaging of thirst at the close of day. Thus did H. R. reward industry.
Before the sandwich-men had made the beat a dozen times all upper Fifth Avenue heard about it. A stream of limousines, preciously freighted, halted before the Goodchild mansion and poured out into the sidewalk friends and acquaintances of the Goodchilds. On the dowagers' faces you could see the smug self-congratulations that their daughters, thank goodness, did not have to be wooed thus vulgarly to get into the newspapers. And on the daughters the watching reporters saw smiles and envious gleams of bright eyes. Why couldn't they be thus desperately wooed in public? To let the world know you were desired, to have a man brave all the world in order to let the world know it! It was heroism! And even more: it was great fun!
The dowagers went in to express both surprise and condolence to Mrs. Goodchild. The girls rushed to Grace's boudoir to ask questions.
Mrs. Goodchild tried to brazen it out. Then she tried to treat it humorously. But the dowagers called both bluffs. Then she foolishly told them, "The poor young man is quite insane."
They chorused, "He must be!" with conviction—the conviction that she was lying like a suburban boomer. Of course she paid him for the work.