They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of "Alexander's Ragtime Band."
When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one of the Big Three to the championship.
"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise your salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't deserve it, but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd immediately get married."
The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted with indignation.
"And why should I not get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine one to talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."
"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."