"Grace Goodchild!" answered H. R., absently.
"Oh, I thought—"
H. R. started. "What? Oh! You are thinking of business. Well, I'm going to put New York on the map at one fell swoop."
Andrew Barrett beamed. At last, millions! All New York using sandwiches at regular rates!
H. R. looked at his lieutenant and smiled forgivingly. After all, it was not Andrew's fault that the spring was not in his soul.
"Barrett, men and women in all civilized communities desire three things. All of them begin with a B. Can you guess?"
"Not I!" answered Barrett, with diplomatic self-depreciation. There are questions whose answers gain you mortal enmity by depriving the questioner of the greatest of all pleasures.
"Bread, beauty, and bunco. You satisfy all the natural wants of humanity by supplying these three. Now men pay for their necessities with whatever coin happens to be current. I have sometimes thought of a state of society in which payment need not be made in interchangeable labor units, but in the self-satisfaction of accomplishment. I have even dreamed," he finished, sternly, "of making goodness fashionable!"
"Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Barrett, in indescribable awe.
H. R. shook his head gloomily. "The trouble," he said, bitterly, "is that it is so damned easy to be good, so obviously intelligent, so natural! Men are bad, I firmly believe, because badness is so roundabout and expensive. How else can you explain it? Society, since money was invented, has craved for expensive things. Society is, in truth, expense."