"Think of your family!" urged Yates. "Think of--of Drusilla."
"Do you know," observed Carr, twirling his eyeglass and twisting his mustache, "that I'm beginning not to care what my family think!... Isn't it amazing, Yates? I--I seem to be somebody else, several years younger. Somewhere," he added, with a flourish of his monocle--"somewhere on earth there is a little birdie waiting for me."
"Don't talk that way!" exclaimed Yates, horrified.
"Yes, I will, young man. I repeat, with optimism and emphasis, that somewhere there is a birdie----"
"Mr. Carr!"
"Yes, merry old Top!"
"May I use your telephone?"
"I don't care what you do!" said Carr, gayly. "Use my telephone if you like; pull it out by the roots and throw it over Cooper's Bluff, for all I care! But"--and a sudden glimmer of reason seemed to come over him--"if you have one grain of human decency left in you, you won't drag me and my terrible plight into that scurrilous New York paper of yours."
"No," said Yates, "I won't. And that ends my career on Park Row. I'm going to telephone my resignation."
Mr. Carr gazed calmly around and twisted his mustache with a satisfied and retrospective smile.