“Yes, sir; thanky’, sir,” returned the valet gravely.

“And—­Henry!”

“Sir?” with martyred dignity.

“When you are tired of searching for my olivine and opal pin, just find it, for a change.  I’d like to wear that pin for a day or two if it would not inconvenience you.”

“Very good, sir; I will ’unt it hup, sir.”

Gatewood put on his coat, took hat and gloves from the unabashed valet, and sauntered down to the sunny breakfast room, where he found Kerns inspecting a morning paper and leisurely consuming grapefruit with a cocktail on the side.

“Hullo,” observed Kerns briefly.

“I’m not on the telephone,” snapped Gatewood.

“I beg your pardon; how are you, dear friend?”

“I don’t know how I am,” retorted Gatewood irritably; “how the devil should a man know how he is?”

“Everything going to the bowwows, as usual, dear friend?”

“As usual.  Oh, read your paper, Tommy!  You know well enough I’m not one of those tail-wagging imbeciles who wakes up in the morning singing like a half-witted lark.  Why should I, with this taste in my mouth, and the laundress using vitriol, and Henry sneering at my cigars?” He yawned and cast his eyes toward the ceiling.  “Besides, there’s too much gilt all over this club!  There’s too much everywhere.  Half the world is stucco, the rest rococo.  Where’s that Martini I bid for?”

Kerns, undisturbed, applied himself to cocoa and toasted muffins.  Grapefruit and an amber-tinted accessory were brought for the other and sampled without mirth.  However, a little later Gatewood said:  “Well, are you going to read your paper all day?”

“What you need,” said Kerns, laying the paper aside, “is a job—­any old kind would do, dear friend.”

“I don’t want to make any more money.”

“I don’t want you to.  I mean a job where you’d lose a lot and be scared into thanking Heaven for carfare. You’re a nice object for the breakfast table!”

“Bridge.  I will be amiable enough by noon time.”

“Yes, you’re endurable by noon time, as a rule.  When you’re forty you may be tolerated after five o’clock; when you’re fifty your wife and children might even venture to emerge from the cellar after dinner—­”

“Wife!”

“I said wife,” replied Kerns, as he calmly watched his man.

He had managed it well, so far, and he was wise enough not to overdo it.  An interval of silence was what the situation required.

“I wish I had a wife,” muttered Gatewood after a long pause.

“Oh, haven’t you said that every day for five years?  Wife!  Look at the willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town.  Isn’t this borough a bower of beauty—­a flowery thicket where the prettiest kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors?  And what do you do?  You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies, growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you’ve even given that up.  Now you only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully that you never have seen your ideal. I know you.”