“Are you dining here?” inquired Kerns, pushing the electric button with enthusiasm.  “Well, that’s the first glimmer of common sense you’ve betrayed since you’ve been married!”

“Dining here!” repeated Gatewood.  “I should hope not!  I am just going home—­”

“He’s thoroughly cowed,” commented Kerns; “every married man you meet at the club is just going home.”  But he continued to push the button, nevertheless.

Gatewood leaned back in his chair and gazed about him, nose in the air.  “What a life!” he observed virtuously.  “It’s all I can do to stand it for ten minutes.  You’re here for the evening, I suppose?” he added pityingly.

“No,” said Kerns; “I’m going uptown to Billy Lee’s house to get my suit case.  His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs.  I’m to lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company to-night.  Then I go to Boston on the 12.10.  Want to come?  There’ll be a few doing.”

“To Boston!  What for?”

“Contracts!  We can go out to Cambridge when I’ve finished my business.  There’ll be etwas doing.”

“Can’t you ever recover from being an undergraduate?” asked Gatewood, disgusted.

“Well—­is there anything the matter with a man getting next to a little amusement in life?” asked Kerns.  “Do you object to my being happy?”

“Amusement?  You don’t know how to amuse yourself.  You don’t know how to be happy.  Here you sit, day after day, swallowing Martinis—­” He paused to finish his own, then resumed:  “Here you sit, day after day, intellectually stultified, unemotionally ignorant of the higher and better life—­”

“No, I don’t.  I’ve a book upstairs that tells all about that.  I read it when I have holdovers—­”

“Kerns, I wish to speak seriously.  I’ve had it on my mind ever since I married.  May I speak frankly?”

“Well, when I come back from Boston—­”

“Because I know a girl,” interrupted Gatewood—­“wait a moment, Tommy!”—­as Kerns rose and sauntered toward the door—­“you’ve plenty of time to catch your train and be civil, too!  I mean to tell you about that girl, if you’ll listen.”

Kerns halted and turned upon his friend a pair of eyes, unwinking in their placid intelligence.

“I was going to say that I know a girl,” continued Gatewood, “who is just the sort of a girl you—­”

“No, she isn’t!” said Kerns, wheeling to resume his progress toward the cloakroom.

“Tom!”

Kerns halted.

“You’re a fine specimen!” commented Gatewood scornfully.  “You spent the best years of your life in persuading me to get married, and the first time I try to do the same for you, you make for the tall timber!”

“I know it,” admitted Kerns, unashamed; “I’m bashful.  I’m a chipmunk for shyness, so I’ll say good night—­”