"Yes, most of us are on the North Side," she observed.
"Ogden is as good as a neighbor already," Walworth went on, perseveringly; "a business neighbor. He is going into the Underground National. Letters and all that, you know. Pretty good for three weeks, I call it. If most of our fellows who come out here did as well in three months it would be money in Mrs. Lloyd's pocket. To think of the fives and tens and twenties that have gone to old schoolmates of Win's and to fellows who knew Lovell when he was on the road!"
Ogden flushed a little and took the first step towards a frown. It is not pleasant to contemplate your possible inclusion in the reprehensible class of the strapped and the stranded, nor to feel that only a lucky letter of recommendation has saved a friend's wife from being crossed in some caprice or balked in some whim. But Floyd, although cordial and liberal, was not invariably fine.
"They stop me on the street, and they buttonhole me in the hotels, and you can't think how many of them come right here. Of course, I always do what I can. But how do they find me out? And why is it that when I am going up home late over the viaduct and somebody is hanging about to strike some man for a quarter, I am always the man to be struck? One or two of them have actually paid me back, but—"
"Who?" asked his sister-in-law. She had a loud, rasping voice. "The men on the viaduct?"
"The others," Walworth indicated briefly.
"You are too generous," said Ogden. What a position for a man who was not to enter upon an engagement to-morrow! And what might three months be, if judged by the hopes and fears and expectations and disappointments of his three weeks!
"The Underground?" repeated Mrs. Floyd, turning towards her husband. "Isn't that Mayme Brainard's father's bank?" she asked in a general way.
"Mr. Brainard is the president," assented Ogden, with a severe smile. "I addressed myself to the cashier," he added shortly.
"I was sure I had heard of it," she rejoined, with a glacial graciousness.