Bradley hastened to throw open the narrow glass door adjoining the show-window, and motioned George in with a friendly and quizzical grimace.
"Let Jones walk," he said, crinkling up his eyes and laying his fat hand on Ogdens shoulder.
"He is walking," responded George, with a wan smile.
Bradley drew him in and closed the door.
"Well, let him walk in a different path, then. Let him come out to Hinsdale to-morrow and try the primrose path."
"Of dalliance?" asked George, with a doleful attempt to meet half-way the cheery facetiousness of the other.
Well, I dont think a little dalliance would hurt him." Bradley made it seem quite absurd that a young fellow of twenty-five should have any real cares and annoyances. "All work and no playyou know."
"Im afraid so, admitted George, with a pathos that the elder man found amusing.
Bradley stepped back to a snug office that was was stowed away behind a tall piece of shelving piled with newly bound account-books, to pick up his hat. "I'm glad to have caught sight of you," he proceeded, with the friendliness of an elder brother; "I've just taken an hour or so to overhaul things here a little. If you're going north, I'll walk a block or two with you."
They passed out into the street and picked their way along through the splashing, slumping, and dripping that marks the spring break-up. They elbowed other pedestrians over miry flaggings, and they dodged the muddy spray that bumping trucks sent up from the street-car tracks at almost every crossing.