“Oh,” said Mallory, “I suppose that comes from his being assigned to a tea given by the Thatcher Forbes for some foreign celebrity, and asking to be let off because he’d already been invited there and declined.”
“Hello!” exclaimed McHale. “Where does our young bird come in to fly as high as the Thatcher Forbes? He may look like a million dollars, but is he?”
“All I know,” said Tommy Burt, “is that every Monday, which is his day off, he dines at Sherry’s, and goes in lonely glory to a first-night, if there is one, afterward. It must have been costing him half of his week’s salary.”
“Swelled head, sure,” diagnosed Decker, the financial reporter of The Ledger. “Well, watch the great Chinese joss, Greenough, pull the props from under him when the time comes.”
“As how?” inquired Glidden.
“By handing him a nawsty one out of the assignment book, just to show him where his hat fits too tight.”
“A run of four-line obits,” suggested Van Cleve, who had passed a painful apprenticeship of death-notices in which is neither profitable space nor hopeful opportunity, “for a few days, will do it.”
“Or the job of asking an indignant millionaire papa why his pet daughter ran away with the second footman and where.”
“Or interviewing old frozen-faced Willis Enderby on his political intentions, honorable or dishonorable.”
“If I know Banneker,” said Mallory, “he’s game. He’ll take what’s handed him and put it over.”