“It wouldn’t do anybody any good,” she decided with a trace of contempt.
“Guess again,” he advised her. “That dope has cured a million people that had nothing the matter with ’em.”
At the Hotel Deriche in the adjoining block they turned into the huge, garishly decorated dining-room for their after-theater supper. They had been in the town only two days, but the head waiter already knew to come eagerly to meet them, to show them to the best table in the room, and to assign them the best waiter; also the head waiter himself remained to take the order, to suggest a delicate, new dish and to name over, at Wallingford’s solicitation, the choice wines in the cellar that were not upon the wine-list.
This little formality over, Wallingford looked about him complacently. A pale gentleman with a jet-black beard bowed to him from across the room.
“Doctor Lazzier,” observed Wallingford to his wife. “Most agreeable chap and has plenty of money.”
He bent aside a little to see past his wife’s hat, and exchanged a suave salutation with a bald-headed young man who was with two ladies and who wore a dove-gray silk bow with his evening clothes.
“Young Corbin,” explained Wallingford, “of the Corbin and Paley department store. He had about two dollars a week spending money till his father died, and now he and young Paley are turning social flip-flaps at the rate of twenty a minute. He belongs to the Mark family and he’s great pals with me. Looks good for him, don’t it?”
“Jim,” she said in earnest reproval, “you mustn’t talk that way.”
“Of course I’m only joking,” he returned. “You know I promised you I’d stick to the straight and narrow. I’ll keep my word. Nothing but straight business for me hereafter.”
He, too, was quite serious about it, and yet he smiled as he thought of young Corbin. Another man, of a party just being shown to a table, nodded to him, and Mrs. Wallingford looked up at her husband with admiration.