Mr. Pett placed the bulk of the Sunday paper on the floor beside him, and began to run an appreciative eye over the comic supplement. That lingering boyishness in him which endeared him to Ann always led him to open his Sabbath reading in this fashion. Grey-headed though he was, he still retained both in art and in real life a taste for the slapstick. No one had ever known the pure pleasure it had given him when Raymond Green, his wife's novelist protege, had tripped over a loose stair-rod one morning and fallen an entire flight.

From some point farther down the corridor came a muffled thudding. Ann stopped her work to listen.

"There's Jerry Mitchell punching the bag."

"Eh?" said Mr. Pett.

"I only said I could hear Jerry Mitchell in the gymnasium."

"Yes, he's there."

Ann looked out of the window thoughtfully for a moment. Then she swung round in her swivel-chair.

"Uncle Peter."

Mr. Pett emerged slowly from the comic supplement.

"Eh?"

"Did Jerry Mitchell ever tell you about that friend of his who keeps a dogs' hospital down on Long Island somewhere? I forget his name. Smithers or Smethurst or something. People--old ladies, you know, and people--bring him their dogs to be cured when they get sick. He has an infallible remedy, Jerry tells me. He makes a lot of money at it."Money?" Pett, the student, became Pett, the financier, at the magic word. "There might be something in that if one got behind it. Dogs are fashionable. There would be a market for a really good medicine."

"I'm afraid you couldn't put Mr. Smethurst's remedy on the market. It only works when the dog has been overeating himself and not taking any exercise."

"Well, that's all these fancy dogs ever have the matter with them. It looks to me as if I might do business with this man. I'll get his address from Mitchell."

"It's no use thinking of it, uncle Peter. You couldn't do business with him--in that way. All Mr. Smethurst does when anyone brings him a fat, unhealthy dog is to feed it next to 

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