fellow students at the Tech. He had a dry, humorous way of saying things, particularly when he talked of himself, which puzzled strangers but delighted his friends. He was treating Storrs quite as though there had been no break in their intercourse.

“Met some of our old Boston pals during the recent unpleasantness and heard of you occasionally on the other side,” he was saying. “Frankly, I’m not keen about war”—he was composedly eating a melon—“war is fatiguing. I hope the great nations will behave for the rest of my life, so I won’t be annoyed by having to go out and settle the row.”

“Here too, Bud; I got enough. I want to have a try at the arts of peace.”

“So say we all. By the way, are you married yet?”

“No.”

“That’s bad. Marriage is an honorable estate; I’m rather keen about it. I took me a wife as soon as I got back from France. Oh, Lord, no! None of the girls we knew around Boston. Couldn’t afford them,[16] and besides it’s a mistake not to marry in your home town, and it’s also easier when you’re a bloomin’ pauper. I married into one of the strongest wholesale grocery houses in all these parts. I’ll drive you by the warehouse, an impressive pile—one of the biggest concerns west of Pittsburgh. Maybelle is the name of the lucky girl, and Maybelle is the only child of the Conrad of Conrad, Buxton and Pettibone. A wonderful girl—one of the really strong, powerful women of this great nation. She’s out of town at present, playing a golf tournament for the huckleberry association championship. That’s why I’m chasing downtown for breakfast—cook’s on a vacation. You’ll meet Maybelle; she’s a person, that girl! Married me out of pity; thinks I’m half-witted, and right, at that!”

[16]

“Of course you’d have to marry a girl who’d make allowance for your mental infirmities,” Bruce replied. “Getting on in your profession, I suppose?”

“Hell, no! I chucked that. There are too many really capable electrical experts, and after Maybelle’s father had tried me for six months in the grocery and I failed to show any talent for distributing the well-known Verbena Brand of canned stuff, he set me up in the automobile business. Shameful to relate, I really make money. I handle the Plantagenet—one of the worst cars on the market. You know it was a mistake—my feeling that I was called to be another Edison or Marconi. I was really cut out for the literary life—another sad case of mute, 

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