ot to
have tried to see him.

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he sat down, and looked
at March awhile with his old eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of
old eyes stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said, abruptly, "Mr.
March, how would you like to take this thing off my hands?"

"I don't understand, exactly," March began; but of course he understood
that Dryfoos was offering to let him have 'Every Other Week' on some
terms or other, and his heart leaped with hope.

The old man knew he understood, and so he did not explain. He said: "I
am going to Europe, to take my family there. The doctor thinks it might
do my wife some good; and I ain't very well myself, and my girls both
want to go; and so we're goin'. If you want to take this thing off my
hands, I reckon I can let you have it in 'most any shape you say. You're
all settled here in New York, and I don't suppose you want to break up,
much, at your time of life, and I've been thinkin' whether you wouldn't
like to take the thing."

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three times, made March at last
think of Fulkerson; he had been filled too full of himself to think
of any one else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful
good fortune as seemed about falling to him. But now he did think of
Fulkerson, and with some shame and confusion; for he remembered how,
when Dryfoos had last approached him there on the business of his
connection with 'Every Other Week,' he had been very haughty with him,
and told him that he did not know him in this connection. He blushed to
find how far his thoughts had now run without encountering this obstacle
of etiquette.

"Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson?" he asked.

"No, I hain't. It ain't a question of management. It's a question of
buying and selling. I offer the thing to you first. I reckon Fulkerson
couldn't get on very well without you."

March saw the real difference in the two cases, and he was glad to
see it, because he could act more decisively if not hampered by an
obligation to consistency. "I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos;
extremely gratified; and it's no use pretending that I shouldn't be
happy beyond bounds to get possession of 'Every Other Week.' But I don't
feel quite free to talk about it apart from Mr. Fulkerson."

"Oh, all right!" said the old man, with quick offence.

March hastened to say: "I feel bound to Mr. Fulkerson in every way. He
got me to come here, and I couldn't even