then they're crazy
for fear it won't work; then it _does_ work, and they think they're
the Lord's anointed; and bye-and-bye they look around and feel--sort
of apologetic."

"Oh. Do _you_ feel apologetic?"

"I'm looking around, anyway."

"You'd better save your energy. Mix's amendment's coming up pretty
soon, and even if it doesn't pass, I don't see how we're going to
compete with this weather. It's so abominably beautiful that
it's--sickening."

"Oh--Mix!" she said, scornfully. "It gives me the creeps just to hear
his name! He's a nasty hypocrite, and a sneak, and a--How long do you
suppose he'll be hurrying around with that pious air after he gets his
money? Why, he won't even stay in the League!"

Henry grimaced. "You're wrong. If he gets his money, he _will_ stay in
the League, and I'll bet on it."

There was a short silence. "Henry," she burst out, "everything
considered, I believe he wants your uncle's money more than we do!"

"Whichever one of us gets it,--" said Henry grimly, "--He'll _earn_
it!"

* * * * *

When he recalled his previous years of irresponsibility, he was
staggered to realize how little a fifty dollar bill had meant to him.
It had meant a casual request across the breakfast table; now, it
meant that seventy-five or a hundred people were willing to pay him a
few cents apiece for the result of his headaches; and the absence of
those people, and the failure of those receipts, meant the difference
between achievement and bitter downfall.

He had risked everything on his monopoly, and added six thousand
dollars to his quota. For two months, he had carried the double load,
and beaten his schedule; in early May, he was falling behind at the
rate of fifty dollars a week. With twelve weeks ahead, he faced a
deficit of a paltry six hundred dollars--and the Mix amendment was
peeping over the horizon.

He shaved down his expenses to the uttermost penny; he ruthlessly
discarded the last fraction of his class pride, and in emergency, to
save the cost of a substitute, acted in place of his own doorman. He
rearranged the lighting of the auditorium to save half a dollar a day.
When the regular pianist was ill, he permitted Anna, for an entire
fortnight, to play in his stead; and during that fortnight they ate
three meals a day in a quick-lunch restaurant. There was no economy so
trivial that he wouldn't embrace it; and yet his receipts hung
steadily, madde