"Doing pretty good over there, are you?" he asked. "I've heard a little something about you from time to time. Not much. Not much. Just a little. Not unfavorable, though. Not unfavorable."
"I hope not," said Eugene easily. He wondered why Colfax was so interested in him. The latter kept looking him over much as one might examine a prize animal. Their eyes would meet and Colfax's would gleam with a savage but friendly fire.
"Well?" said Eugene to him finally.
"I'm just thinking, my boy! I'm just thinking!" he returned, and that was all Eugene could get out of him.
It was not long after this very peculiar meeting which stuck in Eugene's memory that Colfax invited him over to his house in New York to dinner. "I wish," he wrote one day not long after this meeting, "that the next time you are in New York you would let me know. I would like to have you come to my house to dine. You and I ought to be pretty good friends. There are a number of things I would like to talk to you about."
This was written on the paper of the United Magazines Corporation, which had just been organized to take over the old company of Swinton, Scudder and Davis, and was labeled "The Office of the President."
Eugene thought this was significant. Could Colfax be going to make him an offer of some kind? Well, the more the merrier! He was doing very well indeed, and liked Mr. Kalvin very much, in fact, all his surroundings, but, as an offer was a testimonial to merit and could be shown as such, he would not be opposed to receiving it. It might strengthen him with Kalvin if it did nothing else. He made an occasion to go over, first talking the letter over with Angela, who was simply curious about the whole thing. He told her how much interested Colfax appeared to be the first time they met and that he fancied it might mean an offer from the United Magazines Corporation at some time or other.
"I'm not particularly anxious about it," said Eugene, "but I'd like to see what is there."
Angela was not sure that it was wise to bother with it. "It's a big firm," she said, "but it isn't bigger than Mr. Kalvin's, and he's been mighty nice to you. You'd better not do anything to injure yourself with him."
Eugene thought of this. It was sound advice. Still he wanted to hear.