framed?"

Both Mallow and Stoner nodded. "Don't you?" the former inquired. When
no answer was forthcoming, he said: "Better give us the flag, Governor.
We're rar'ing to go."

"You mean--?"

"You know what I mean. Nelson's so crooked his bedclothes fall off. We
pulled a boner this time, but Brick has got another window dressed for
him."

"I'll think it over," said Gray.

CHAPTER XX

Ozark Briskow, like his sister Allegheny, was studying hard and
learning rapidly, but he had adopted an educational plan, a curriculum,
so to speak, far different from hers. Whereas she lived between book
covers and the thousand and one details of her daily existence were
governed by a bewildering army of "don'ts," Buddy had devised his own
peculiar system of acquiring wisdom, and from it the word "don't" had
been deliberately dropped. His excursion into the halls of learning,
brief as it had been, had convinced him that books could teach him only
words, whereas he craved experiences, ideas, adventures. Adventure
comes at night; pleasure walks by gaslight. Young Briskow told himself
that he had missed a lot of late hours and would have to work
diligently to catch up, but he undertook the effort with commendable
courage.

It is said that all wish to possess knowledge, but few are willing to
pay the price. Buddy was one of the minority. Early he adopted the
motto, "Money no object," and it provoked him not at all to learn that
there is a scale of night prices considerably higher than the scale of
day prices; to find, for instance, that a nocturnal highball costs
twice as much as one purchased during daylight hours. That phenomenon,
by the way, had nothing to do with the provisions of the Eighteenth
Amendment, it merely explained why farmers went to bed early--they
couldn't afford to sit up, so Buddy decided.

He had learned a lot since leaving school, not only about prohibition,
but also about speed laws, men's fashions, facial massage, the fox trot
and the shimmy, caviar, silk pajamas, bromo-seltzer, the language of
flowers, and many of the pleasures and displeasures of the higher
intellectual life, such as love and insomnia.

His education was progressing apace, for love is the greatest of
educators, and Buddy was in love--madly, extravagantly in love. Love it
was that accounted for his presence in Dallas, and his occupancy of the
Governor's suite at the Ajax. A fellow in love with the most wonderful
woman in the world could