“Now, by all that’s providential,” he cried, “I’ve got you, at last. When we were at college and I’d go down the line, scattering my change, you’d lend me yours in a fatherly, patronizing way that was peculiarly aggravating.[71] And this is my first chance to get back; I’ve never caught you broke before.”

[71]

He lit a third cigarette and grinned widely.

“How much do you want?” asked he.

“How strong a jolt can you stand?”

“Since I entered the firm of Webster & Seybold, I’ve planted something like fifty thousand dollars. What part of it do you want, Ken? I’ll cut it anywhere you say.”

“Good boy, Garry!” Kenyon looked at his friend with smiling eyes; but the corners of his mouth, usually so firm, twitched a little. “A couple of hundred will do.”

Webster regarded him disgustedly.

“Oh, behave,” said he. “This isn’t a dime-saving fund. If you want to hit the institution at all, you must do it big.”

“No, no.”

“He’s down and out,” thought the young man from Chicago, “and a man in that shape needs a fair-sized dose if it’s to do him any good at all.” Then he said aloud. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do in the way of a compromise. We’ll make it two thousand, and not a damned cent less.”

Kenyon protested, but the other was firm. “It’s just like this,” continued the latter, “I’ve got a reputation to uphold; and I can’t afford, for business reasons, to have my friends live over German beer saloons in the[72] neighborhood of the Battery. Webster & Seybold are above such things.”

[72]

Kenyon slept deeply all that day. Darkness was already thickening above the city when he climbed out of bed and began to douse himself with a huge sponge dipped in a pail of cold water.

“A dollar a day hotel doesn’t offer many conveniences,” said he, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “But, then, I’ve seen more limited accommodations for the morning—or evening—bath, in more pretentious places. It was always a dreadful question with me whether my fellow strugglers for liberty in Uruguay ever bathed or no.”

He donned his dress clothes and took a cab to the Waldorf, where he had engaged to 

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