en in her crisp but faded house dress, her round, intent face still
moistly pink, two steaming dishes held out.

He did not rise, but reached up to kiss her as she passed.

"Burnt your soup a little to-night, mother."

She sat down opposite, breathing deeply outward, spreading her napkin out
across her lap.

"It was Edwin coming in from school and getting me worked up with his talk
about--about--"

"What?"

"Nothing. Edwin, run out and bring papa the paprika to take the burnt taste
out. I turned all the cuffs on your shirts to-day, Harry."

"Lordy! if you ain't fixing at one thing, you're fixing another."

"Anything new?"

He was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of
his spoon.

"News! In A. E. Unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from
the ledger to even smell news."

"I see Goldfinch & Goetz failed."

"Could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show
written in verse. That same show boiled down to good Forty-second Street
lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like Alma Zitelle to lift
it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. A war
spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of
show-girl battalions, and a figure like Alma Zitelle's for the Goddess of
Liberty--a world of money, I tell you!"

"Honest, Harry?"

"That trench scene they built for that show is as fine a contrivance as
I've ever seen of the kind. What did they do? Set it to a lot of music
without a hum or a ankle in it. A few classy nurses like the Mercy Militia
Sextet, some live, grand-old-flag tunes by Harry Mordelle, and there's a
half a million dollars in that show. Unger thinks I'm crazy when I try to
get him interested, but I--"

"I got ninety in manual training to-day, pop."

"That's good, son. Little more of that stew, mother?"

"Unger isn't so smart, honey, he can't afford to take a tip off you once in
a while: you've proved that to him."

"Yes, but go tell him so."

"He'll live to see the day he's got to give you credit for being the first
to see money in 'Pan-America.'"

"Credit? Huh! to hear him tell it, he was born with that idea in his bullet
head."

"I'd like to hear him say it to me, if ever I lay eyes on him, that it
wasn't you who begged him to get into it."

"I'll show 'em some day in that office that I can pick the winners for
myself, as well as for the other fellow. Believe me, Unger hasn't