"All right; go your limit."
"My limit? How far would six one-hundred-dollar municipal bonds and—"
"Good. I'll sell you six per cent of a twenty-thousand-dollar venture for the six hundred."
"Six—percent—twenty—thousand—Why, that's not a man-to-man proposition! You're treating me like a child."
"All right, then; three per cent for the six hundred."
"Done! But no nonsense. If I lose, I lose. Man to man."
"'Man to man,'" he said, clasping her hand and drinking down deep into her gaze.
And so, when she hurried out to the high ledge to which Ida Blair's figure had somehow shaped itself as the years went on, she stood for a moment to steady the hand she placed on that shoulder.
"Ida!" The older woman raised her eyes of the peculiarly washed quality of gray that has faded from repeated scaldings in hot water. "Mr. Visigoth wants you in his office, dear—now."
She kept her voice out of quaver, but it had a singing quality like a plucked violin string.