atre
tickets, and Jim would stop his taxicab on Broadway at the theatre's
door. Here, boy! Boy, come here! Go up and ask him what his best for
to-night are? There's a line of people waiting, eh?--well, go up and ask
some fellow at the top of the line what it's worth to him to get two
seats for me. Oh, fine. Much obliged to you, sir. Thank you. And
here--boy!

"Do you think the entire world circles about your convenience, Jim?"
Julia asked amusedly one day, after some such episode. "Sure," he
answered, grinning.

"Jim, you don't think you can go through life walking over people this
way?"

"Why not, my good lady?"

"Well," said Julia gravely, "some day you may find you want something
you _can't_ buy!"

"There ain't no such animal," Jim assured her cheerfully.

Only a trifling cloud, after all, Julia assured herself hardily. But
there was a constant little sensation of uneasiness in her heart. She
tried to convince herself that the sweetness of his nature had not been
undermined by this ability to indulge himself however fast his fancies
shifted; she reasoned that because so many good things were his, he need
not necessarily hold them in light esteem. Yet the thought persisted
that he knew neither his own mind nor his own heart; there had been no
discipline there, no hard-won battles--there were no reserves.

"I call that simply borrowing trouble!" said Kennedy Scott Marbury
healthily, one day when she and the tiny Scott were lunching with Julia
at the hotel. Kennedy was close to her second confinement, and the
ladies had lunched in Julia's handsome sitting-room. "Lord, Julie dear!
It seems sometimes as if you have to have _something_ in this world,"
Kennedy went on cheerfully; "either actual trouble or mental worries!
Anthony and I were talking finances half last night: we decided that we
can't move to a larger house, just now, and so on--and we both said _what_
would it be like to be free from money worries for ten minutes--"

"But, Ken, don't you see how necessary you are to each other!" said
Julia, kneeling before the chair in which her fat godson was seated, and
displaying a number of gold chains and bracelets for his amusement. "You
have to take a turn at everything--cooking and sewing and caring for old
Sweetum here--Anthony couldn't get on without you!"

"And I suppose you think Doctor Studdiford could find twenty wives as
pretty and clever and charming as you are, Ju?"

"Fifty!" Julia answered.

"W