“We don't want to hurry you,” he said. “We want you to think it over. Maybe if we get acquainted——”
Mrs. Farrell smiled upon me ingratiatingly.
“Why don't we get acquainted now?” she demanded. “We're motoring down to Cape May to stay three weeks. Why don't you come along—as our guest—and see how you like us?”
I assured them, almost too hastily, that already was deeply engaged.
As they departed, Farrell again admonished me to think it over.
“And look me up at Dun's and Bradstreet's,” he advised. “Ask 'em about me at the Waldorf. Ask the head waiters and bellhops if I look twice at a five spot!”
It seemed an odd way to select a father, but I promised.
I escorted them even to the sidewalk, and not without envy watched them sweep toward the Waldorf in the High Flyer, 1915 model. I caught myself deciding, were it mine, I would paint it gray.
I was lunching at the Ritz with Curtis Spencer, and I looked forward to the delight he would take in my story of the Farrells. He would probably want to write it. He was my junior, but my great friend; and as a novelist his popularity was where five years earlier mine had been. But he belonged to the new school. His novels smelled like a beauty parlor; and his heroines, while always beautiful, were, on occasions, virtuous, but only when they thought it would pay.
Spencer himself was as modern as his novels, and I was confident his view of my adventure would be that of the great world which he described so accurately.