The stenographer was waiting to take letters, and Martin had not yet learned to become impersonal and indifferent in her presence. He said with a perceptible tartness:
“Oh, I suppose it’s President Wilson. Look here—”
“Well, Mart, it’s Irve Watters! What do you know about that!”
Apparently the jester expected large gratification, but it took ten seconds for Martin to remember who Irving Watters might be. Then he had it: Watters, the appalling normal medical student whose faith in the good, the true, the profitable, had annoyed him at Digamma Pi. He made his response as hearty as he could:
“Well, well, what you doing here, Irve?”
“Why, I’m settled here. Been here ever since internship. And got a nice little practise, too. Look, Mart, Mrs. Watters and I want you and your wife— I believe you are married, aren’t you?—to come up to the house for dinner, to-morrow evening, and I’ll put you onto all the local slants.”
The dread of Watters’s patronage enabled Martin to lie vigorously:
“Awfully sorry—awfully sorry—got a date for to-morrow evening and the next evening.”
“Then come have lunch with me to-morrow at the Elks’ Club, and you and your wife take dinner with us Sunday noon.”
Hopelessly, “I don’t think I can make it for lunch but— Well, we’ll dine with you Sunday.”