"I'm awful glad you done it when you did," pursued Tracey, oblivious to Nat in his own ecstatic temper. "I guess I wouldn't never 've got up the spunk to—to tell Angie what I did to-night, 'f it hadn't been we was talkin' 'bout your engagement to Josie. Then, somehow, it just seemed to bust right out of me, like I couldn't hold it no longer. Didn't it, Angie?"
"Oh, Tracey, how can you talk so!"
"Then you're engaged, too?" Nat inquired, rousing himself a little and smiling feebly upon them.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm glad to hear it. It's great news. Now run along, both of you, and don't forget you'll never be so happy again." With what he thought an expiring flash of humour he raised his hands above their heads. "Bless you, my children!" he said solemnly. "Now, for Heaven's sake, beat it!"
Alone he went to the prescription desk and opening one of the drawers took out the firm's books. After that for some fifteen minutes there was nothing to be heard in the store save Nat's breathing and the scratching of his pen as he figured out a trial balance....
Brisk footfalls disturbed him. He sighed and moved out into the store to find Kellogg there, suave and easy as always, yet with that in his manner, perceptible perhaps only to a friend of long-standing like Nat, to betray a mind far from complacent.
"Oh, you're here!" he cried, with a distinct start of relief. "I've been looking all over for you."
"I just got in." Nat brushed aside explanations curtly, intent upon his purpose. "Harry, I've got something to say to you: I'm not going through with this thing."
"You're not?"