ld introduce
them, for he came upstairs with Conrad, and they had fairly made
acquaintance before Fulkerson joined them.

Conrad offered to leave them at once, but his father made him stay. "I
reckon Mr. March and I haven't got anything so private to talk about
that we want to keep it from the other partners. Well, Mr. March, are
you getting used to New York yet? It takes a little time."

"Oh yes. But not so much time as most places. Everybody belongs more or
less in New York; nobody has to belong here altogether."

"Yes, that is so. You can try it, and go away if you don't like it a
good deal easier than you could from a smaller place. Wouldn't make so
much talk, would it?" He glanced at March with a jocose light in
his shrewd eyes. "That is the way I feel about it all the time: just
visiting. Now, it wouldn't be that way in Boston, I reckon?"

"You couldn't keep on visiting there your whole life," said March.

Dryfoos laughed, showing his lower teeth in a way that was at once
simple and fierce. "Mr. Fulkerson didn't hardly know as he could get
you to leave. I suppose you got used to it there. I never been in your
city."

"I had got used to it; but it was hardly my city, except by marriage. My
wife's a Bostonian."

"She's been a little homesick here, then," said Dryfoos, with a smile of
the same quality as his laugh.

"Less than I expected," said March. "Of course, she was very much
attached to our old home."

"I guess my wife won't ever get used to New York," said Dryfoos, and he
drew in his lower lip with a sharp sigh. "But my girls like it; they're
young. You never been out our way yet, Mr. March? Out West?"

"Well, only for the purpose of being born, and brought up. I used to
live in Crawfordsville, and then Indianapolis."

"Indianapolis is bound to be a great place," said Dryfoos. "I remember
now, Mr. Fulkerson told me you was from our State." He went on to brag
of the West, as if March were an Easterner and had to be convinced. "You
ought to see all that country. It's a great country."

"Oh yes," said March, "I understand that." He expected the praise of the
great West to lead up to some comment on 'Every Other Week'; and there
was abundant suggestion of that topic in the manuscripts, proofs of
letter-press and illustrations, with advance copies of the latest number
strewn over his table.

But Dryfoos apparently kept himself from looking at these things. He
rolled his head about on his shoulders t