off from the real life
of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and
dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling,
mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay
the test of quietness.

He turned uneasily in bed.

He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet
afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle
pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men
he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat
on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.

"I don't hardly want to go back to work," he prayed. "I'd like to--I
don't know."

But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.

CHAPTER XIX

I

THE Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in
the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they
found it held, on options, by the Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. The
purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of
the Traction Company protested against the Babbitt price. They mentioned
their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts,
though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the
officials found it wiser to compromise with Babbitt. Carbon copies of
the correspondence are in the company's files, where they may be viewed
by any public commission.

Just after this Babbitt deposited three thousand dollars in the bank,
the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five
thousand dollar car, he first vice-president built a home in Devon
Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.

To obtain the options, to tie up one man's land without letting his
neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Babbitt. It was necessary
to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend
that he wasn't taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a
poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened
his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his
secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Babbitt and Thompson
to have any share in the deal except as brokers. Babbitt rather
agreed. "Ethics of the business-broker ought to strictly represent his
principles and not get in on the buying," he said to Thompson.

"Ethics, rats! Think