desk-chair and beamed on Miss McGoun.
He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure
cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled
him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the
desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams.
He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined
touching her lips with frightened reverence and--She was chirping,
"Any more, Mist' Babbitt?" He grunted, "That winds it up, I guess," and
turned heavily away.

For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than
this. He often reflected, "Nev' forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise
bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start
trouble. Sure. But--"

In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every
graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them;
but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as
he calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless
again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his
discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.

CHAPTER IV

IT was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple
prose of Babbitt's form-letter, Chester Kirby Laylock, the resident
salesman at Glen Oriole, came in to report a sale and submit an
advertisement. Babbitt disapproved of Laylock, who sang in choirs and
was merry at home over games of Hearts and Old Maid. He had a tenor
voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel's-hair brush.
Babbitt considered it excusable in a family-man to growl, "Seen this
new picture of the kid--husky little devil, eh?" but Laylock's domestic
confidences were as bubbling as a girl's.

"Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen, Mr. Babbitt.
Why don't we try something in poetry? Honest, it'd have wonderful
pulling-power. Listen:

'Mid pleasures and palaces,
Wherever you may roam,
You just provide the little bride
And we'll provide the home.

Do you get it? See--like 'Home Sweet Home.' Don't you--"

"Yes, yes, yes, hell yes, of course I get it. But--Oh, I think we'd
better use something more dignified and forceful, like 'We lead, others
follow,' or 'Eventually, why not now?' Course I believe in using
poetry and humor and all that junk when it turns the trick, but with a
high-class restricted development like