"He made a monkey of me."
"I should say he did!" Whittlesy cried. "Oh, you'll hold me in the hollow of your hand, will you?"
Flummers looked at Whittlesy and scalloped the forerunner of a withering speech; but, thoughtful enough suddenly to remember that at this solemn time his words and his eyes belonged not to one man, but to the entire company, he withdrew his gaze from Whittlesy, and in his broad look included every one present.
"He made a monkey of me. He stopped me on the street one evening—I had boned him for an advertisement when I was running The Art of Interior Decoration—and was so polite that I said to myself: 'Papa, here's another flip man thirsting for recognition. Put him on your staff.' Well, we had a bowl or two at Garry's, and the first thing I knew he began to remind me that I remembered a fellow who must be Kittymunks, and I said, 'Hi, gi, here's a scoop.' And it was. Oh, it's a pretty hard matter to scoop papa"—(tapping his head). "Papa knows what the public wants, and he serves it up. Some of you dry-dock conservative ducks would have let it go by, but papa is nothing if not adventurous. Papa knows that without adventure you make no discoveries. But, wow! he did make a monkey of me. Just think of a floor-walker making a monkey of papa!" He pressed his hand to his brow. "Why, a floor-walker has been my especial delicacy—he has been my appetizer, my white-meat—but, wow! this fellow was a gristle."
"Mr. Flummers," said McGlenn, "we all love you."
"Say, John, I owe you two dollars."
"No, Mr. Flummers, you don't owe me anything."
"But I borrowed two dollars from you, John, when I started The Bankers' Review."
"No man can borrow money from me, Mr. Flummers. If he gets money from me, it's his and not mine. We all love you, Mr. Flummers, and your Kittymunks escapade, so thoroughly in keeping with our estimate of you, has added strength to our affection. If you wish to keep friends, Mr. Flummers, you must do nothing which they could not forecast for you. The development of hitherto undiscovered traits, of an unsuspected and therefore an inconsistent strength, is a dash of cold water in the face of friendship. We are tied to you by a strong rope made of the strands of weaknesses, Mr. Flummers."
"Oh, no."