he thought maybe I’d write it up; and he drove me out there himself.  Well, it was funny to see a town made:  streets driven through; two rows of shadetrees, hard and soft, planted; cellars dug and houses put up-regular Queen Anne style, too, with stained glass-all at once.  Dryfoos apologized for the streets because they were hand-made; said they expected their street-making machine Tuesday, and then they intended to push things.”

Fulkerson enjoyed the effect of his picture on March for a moment, and then went on:  “He was mighty intelligent, too, and he questioned me up about my business as sharp as I ever was questioned; seemed to kind of strike his fancy; I guess he wanted to find out if there was any money in it.  He was making money, hand over hand, then; and he never stopped speculating and improving till he’d scraped together three or four hundred thousand dollars, they said a million, but they like round numbers at Moffitt, and I guess half a million would lay over it comfortably and leave a few thousands to spare, probably.  Then he came on to New York.”

Fulkerson struck a match against the ribbed side of the porcelain cup that held the matches in the centre of the table, and lit a cigarette, which he began to smoke, throwing his head back with a leisurely effect, as if he had got to the end of at least as much of his story as he meant to tell without prompting.

March asked him the desired question.  “What in the world for?”

Fulkerson took out his cigarette and said, with a smile:  “To spend his money, and get his daughters into the old Knickerbocker society.  Maybe he thought they were all the same kind of Dutch.”

“And has he succeeded?”

“Well, they’re not social leaders yet.  But it’s only a question of time—­generation or two—­especially if time’s money, and if Every Other Week is the success it’s bound to be.”

“You don’t mean to say, Fulkerson,” said March, with a half-doubting, half-daunted laugh, “that he’s your Angel?”

“That’s what I mean to say,” returned Fulkerson.  “I ran onto him in Broadway one day last summer.  If you ever saw anybody in your life; you’re sure to meet him in Broadway again, sooner or later.  That’s the philosophy of the bunco business; country people from the same neighborhood are sure to run up against each other the first time they come to New York.  I put out my hand, and I said, ’Isn’t this Mr. Dryfoos from Moffitt?’ He didn’t seem to have any use for my hand; he let me keep it, and he squared those old lips of his till his imperial stuck straight out.  Ever see Bernhardt in ‘L’Etrangere’?  Well, the American husband is old Dryfoos all over; no mustache; and hay-colored chin-whiskers cut slanting froze the corners of his mouth.  He cocked his little gray eyes at me, and says he:  ’Yes, young man; my name is Dryfoos, and I’m from Moffitt.  But I don’t want no present of Longfellow’s Works, illustrated; and I don’t want to taste no fine teas; but I know a policeman that does; and if you’re the son of my old friend Squire Strohfeldt, you’d better get out.’  ‘Well, then,’ said I, ’how would you like to go into the newspaper syndicate business?’ He gave another look at me, and then he burst out laughing, and he grabbed my hand, and he just froze to it.  I never saw anybody so glad.