nd. Nice-looking
stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank
God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.

"She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married
to her. No, nor by golly going to be!

"Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her."

II

Thursday, the to-morrow of Tanis's note, was full of emotional crises.
At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Gunch talked of the Good
Citizens' League and (it seemed to Babbitt) deliberately left him out
of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man
at Babbitt's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his
oldest boy was "no good," his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with
his brother-in-law. Conrad Lyte also had Troubles, and since Lyte was
one of his best clients, Babbitt had to listen to them. Mr. Lyte, it
appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and
the garage had overcharged him. When Babbitt came home, everybody had
Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the
impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Tinka desired to
denounce her teacher.

"Oh, quit fussing!" Babbitt fussed. "You never hear me whining about my
Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I
found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched
my finger in my desk, and Lyte was in and just as unreasonable as ever."

He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape
to Tanis, he merely grumped to his wife, "Got to go out. Be back by
eleven, should think."

"Oh! You're going out again?"

"Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house
for a week!"

"Are you--are you going to the Elks?"

"Nope. Got to see some people."

Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt,
though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into
the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to
start the car.

He was relieved to find Tanis cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in
a frock of brown net over gold tissue. "You poor man, having to come
out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small
highball would be nice?"

"Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or
less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot
tall!"

He kissed her with careles