“Well, that sure is good news. I’ve a little bit that I’d like to put in it. I’d like to put it in something safe, though. You know of something safe? Something that’s going to go way up, say?”
“Well, that’s a hard question. It’s very hard to tell just yet. Sugar’s doing well,” said Robert Holton. He always said the same things to these questions. No one cared what he said. They would repeat it to acquaintances, saying that a friend of theirs in Wall Street had advised them to buy sugar but they didn’t feel it was such a good buy at this time.
“You was in the army, weren’t you?” asked the stout man suddenly.
Robert Holton nodded.
“Been out long?”
“Over a year.”
“I’ll bet you was glad to get out. To get away from all those rules and things, those restrictions. I was in the army in the last war. I guess the one before last, you’d call it now. I was sure glad to get out.”
“Everyone is,” said Robert Holton and he thought of the things that he had done in London. He had liked London.
“You went to college, didn’t you?” asked the stout man; he was trying to clear up something in his mind.
“That’s right.”