“What's the trouble?”
“The usual trouble when I try to beat the stock-market—embarras de richesses.”
“It is an embarrassment that most people would welcome.”
“Tut! The more elaborate the menu is in a good restaurant the greater your indecision as to which particular dish you will order! Well, I went through the Menagerie!” There was a catarrhal despair in his voice.
“Yes?”
“And I am undecided between four.”
Robison looked anxiously at the broker, and Richards felt such an annoyance as a man might feel if compelled at the point of a pistol to listen to the reading of one hundred pages of the city directory. But he smiled tolerantly, for he had the professional amiability indispensable to men whose business consists of making money and of consoling clients for losing money.
“Four what?” he asked.
“Four sure ways.”
“Which four?” asked Richards. He managed to convey both that he was dying to listen and that the rest of the world did not exist for him.