“Just have that cleared out and a ’phone put in. I’ll get right down to business this afternoon and see about the fittings for it.” Then he looked at his watch once more. “By George!” he exclaimed, “I almost forgot that I was to see Nick Allstyne at the Idlers’ Club about that polo match. Just have one of your boys stand out at the curb along about twelve, will you, and tell my chauffeur to report at the club.”
Johnson eyed the closed door over his spectacles.
“He’ll be having blue suits and brass buttons on us two next,” he snorted.
“He don’t mean it at all that way,” protested Applerod. “For my part, I think he’s a fine young fellow.”
“I’ll give you to understand, sir,” retorted Johnson, violently resenting this imputed defection, “that he is the son of his father, and for that, if for nothing else, would have my entire allegiance.”
Bobby, meanwhile, feeling very democratic and very much a man of affairs, took a street-car to the Idlers’, and strode through the classic portals of that club with gravity upon his brow. Flaxen-haired Nick Allstyne, standing by the registry desk, turned to dark Payne Winthrop with a nod.
“You win,” he admitted. “I’ll have to charge it up to you, Bobby. I just lost a quart of the special to Payne that since you’d become immersed in the cares of business you’d not be here.”
Bobby was almost austere in his reception of this slight.
“Don’t you know,” he demanded, “that there is nobody who keeps even his social engagements like a business man?”
“That’s what I gambled on,” returned Payne confidentially, “but I wasn’t sure just how much of a business man you’d become. Nick, don’t you already seem to see a crease in Bobby’s brow?”