suggestions."

"Why, uh, why--"

"Of course I'm rather busy with our new Long Island operations, so if
you have a date to-morrow, the matter can wait, but I thought you'd
better have the suggestions while they were fresh in my mind. But
perhaps I can lunch with you week after next, if--"

"No, no, let's make it to-morrow."

"Very well. Will you call for me here--Truax & Fein, Zodiac Building?"

Una arose at six-thirty next morning, to dress the part of the great
business woman, and before she went to the office she had her hair
waved.

Mr. Bob Sidney called for her. He was a simple, energetic soul, with a
derby on the back of his head, cheerful, clean-shaven, large-chinned,
hoarse-voiced, rapidly revolving a chewed cigar. She, the commonplace,
was highly evolved in comparison with Mr. Sidney, and there was no
nervousness in her as she marched out in a twenty-dollar hat and
casually said, "Let's go to the Waldorf--it's convenient and not at all
bad."

On the way over Mr. Sidney fairly massaged his head with his agitated
derby--cocked it over one eye and pushed it back to the crown of his
head--in his efforts to find out what and why was Mrs. Una Schwirtz. He
kept appraising her. It was obvious that he was trying to decide whether
this mysterious telephone correspondent was an available widow who had
heard of his charms. He finally stumbled over the grating beside the
Waldorf and bumped into the carriage-starter, and dropped his dead
cigar. But all the while Una steadily kept the conversation to the
vernal beauties of Pennsylvania.

Thanks to rice powder and the pride of a new hat, she looked cool and
adequate. But she was thinking all the time: "I never could keep up this
Beatrice-Joline pose with Mr. Fein or Mr. Ross. Poor Una, with them
she'd just have to blurt out that she wanted a job!"

She sailed up to a corner table by a window. The waiter gave the menu to
Mr. Sidney, but she held out her hand for it. "This is my lunch. I'm a
business woman, not just a woman," she said to Mr. Sidney; and she
rapidly ordered a lunch which was shockingly imitative of one which Mr.
Fein had once ordered for her.

"Prett' hot day for April," said Mr. Sidney.

"Yes.... Is the White Line going well?"

"Yump. Doing a land-office business."

"You're having trouble with your day clerk at Brockenfelt, I see."

"How juh know?"

"Oh--" She merely smiled.

"Well, that guy's a four-flush. Came to us from the New Willard, an