Roger smoked for a moment in silence and then sagely nodded his head.

“That’s so,” he murmured thoughtfully.  “Yes, my boy, I guess you’re right.”

Bruce lifted his mint julep: 

“God, but it’s hot in here to-night.  How about taking a spin up the river?”

“Delighted,” replied his father-in-law.

And a half hour later in Bruce’s new car, which was the pride and joy of his life, they were far up the river.  On a long level stretch of road Bruce “let her out to show what she could do.”  And Roger with his heart in his mouth and his eye upon the speedometer, saw it creep to sixty-three.

“Almost as good as a horse,” remarked Bruce, when the car had slowed a little.

“Almost,” said Roger, “but not quite.  It’s—­well, it’s dissipation.”

“And a horse?”

“Is life,” was the grave reply.  “You’ll have a crash some day, my boy, if you go on at your present speed.  It gets me worried sometimes.  You see you’re a family man.”

“I am and I’m glad of it.  Edith and the kiddies suit me right down to the ground.  I’m crazy about ’em—­you know that.  But a chap with a job like mine,” Bruce continued pleadingly, as he drove his car rushing around a curve, “needs a little dissipation, too.  I can’t tell you what it means to me, when I’m kept late at the office, to have this car for the run up home.  Lower Broadway’s empty then, and I know the cops.  I swing around through Washington Square, and the Avenue looks clear for miles, nothing but two long rows of lights to the big hump at Murray Hill.  It’s the time between crowds—­say about ten.  And I know the cops.”

“That’s all right,” said Roger.  “No one was more delighted than I when you got this car.  You deserve it.  It’s the work that I was speaking of.  You’ve got it going at such a speed—­”

“Only way on earth to get on—­to get what I want for my family—­”

“Yes, yes, I know,” muttered Roger vaguely.  Bruce began talking of his work for the steel construction concern downtown.

“Take it from me,” he declared at the end, “this town has only just begun!”

“Has, eh,” Roger grunted.  “Aren’t the buildings high enough?”

“My God, I wish they were twenty times higher,” Bruce rejoined good-humoredly.  “But they won’t be—­we’ve stopped going up.  We’ve done pretty well in the air, and now we’re going underground.  And when we get through, this old rock of Manhattan will be such a network of tunnels there’ll be a hole waiting at every corner to take you wherever you want to go.  Speed?  We don’t even know what it means!”

And again Bruce “let her out” a bit.  It was quite a bit.  Roger grabbed his hat with one hand and the side of the car with the other.