ephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over
town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says,
she's always kicking."

On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me
down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something
I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!"

When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over
a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel,
poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and
put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show
me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers
and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and
supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes.
Now I've got to hurry."

"B-but----"

"Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!"

"I will!"

She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at
her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers.

But he had never worn evening clothes.

He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic
garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill
McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie
Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and
manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear
dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one
waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you
wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black
trousers with braid down the side.

No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in
the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale
football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the
valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in
St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then
St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand.

"How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling
foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the
tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't
everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in
one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loa