job through in business
style." I soon discovered that I had been brought along to admire his
"business style," not to suggest. After two hours, in which he bought in
small lots several tons of statuary, paintings, vases and rugs, he said,
"This is too slow." He pointed his stick at a crowded corner of the shop.
"How much for that bunch of stuff?" he demanded. The proprietor gave him a
figure. "I'll close," said Joe, "if you'll give fifteen off for cash." The
proprietor agreed. "Now we're done," said Joe to me. "Let's go down town,
and maybe I can pick up what I've dropped."

You can imagine that interior. But don't picture it as notably worse than
the interior of the average New York palace. It was, if anything, better
than those houses, where people who deceive themselves about their lack of
taste have taken great pains to prevent any one else from being deceived.
One could hardly move in Joe's big rooms for the litter of gilded and
tapestried furniture, and their crowded walls made the eyes ache.

The appearance of the man who opened the door for Anita and me suggested
that our ring had roused him from a bed where he had deposited himself
without bothering to take off his clothes. At the sound of my voice, Ball
peered out of his private smoking-room, at the far end of the hall. He
started forward; then, seeing how I was accompanied, stopped with mouth
ajar. He had on a ragged smoking-jacket, a pair of shapeless old Romeo
slippers, his ordinary business waistcoat and trousers. He was wearing
neither tie nor collar, and a short, black pipe was between his fingers.
We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the
down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort." Joe was crimson
with confusion, and was using his free hand to stroke, alternately, his
shiny bald head and his heavy brown mustache. He got himself together
sufficiently, after a few seconds, to disappear into his den. When he came
out again, pipe and ragged jacket were gone, and he rushed for us in a
gorgeous velvet jacket with dark red facings, and a showy pair of slippers.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Blacklock"--in his own home he always addressed every
man as Mister, just as "Mrs. B." always called him "Mister Ball," and he
called her "Missus Ball" before "company." "Come right into the front
parlor. Billy, turn on the electric lights."

Anita had been standing with her head down. She now looked round with
shame and terror in t