“Doesn’t that fact seem to point to a postponement till they get back, sometime in October,” March suggested,

“No, no!” said Fulkerson, “you don’t catch on to the business end of this thing, my friends.  You’re proceeding on something like the old exploded idea that the demand creates the supply, when everybody knows, if he’s watched the course of modern events, that it’s just as apt to be the other way.  I contend that we’ve got a real substantial success to celebrate now; but even if we hadn’t, the celebration would do more than anything else to create the success, if we got it properly before the public.  People will say:  Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn’t go and rejoice over their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it.  And the state of feeling we should produce in the public mind would make a boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E. O. W. Heigh?”

He looked sunnily from one to the other in succession.  The elder Dryfoos said, with his chin on the top of his stick, “I reckon those Little Neck clams will keep.”

“Well, just as you say,” Fulkerson cheerfully assented.  “I understand you to agree to the general principle of a little dinner?”

“The smaller the better,” said the old man.

“Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of that seems to cover the case, even if we vary the plan a little.  I had thought of a reception, maybe, that would include the lady contributors and artists, and the wives and daughters of the other contributors.  That would give us the chance to ring in a lot of society correspondents and get the thing written up in first-class shape.  By-the-way!” cried Fulkerson, slapping himself on the leg, “why not have the dinner and the reception both?”

“I don’t understand,” said Dryfoos.

“Why, have a select little dinner for ten or twenty choice spirits of the male persuasion, and then, about ten o’clock, throw open your palatial drawing-rooms and admit the females to champagne, salads, and ices.  It is the very thing!  Come!”

“What do you think of it, Mr. March?” asked Dryfoos, on whose social inexperience Fulkerson’s words projected no very intelligible image, and who perhaps hoped for some more light.

“It’s a beautiful vision,” said March, “and if it will take more time to realize it I think I approve.  I approve of anything that will delay Mr. Fulkerson’s advertising orgie.”

“Then,” Fulkerson pursued, “we could have the pleasure of Miss Christine and Miss Mela’s company; and maybe Mrs. Dryfoos would look in on us in the course of the evening.  There’s no hurry, as Mr. March suggests, if we can give the thing this shape.  I will cheerfully adopt the idea of my honorable colleague.”