“You can.”

“How?”

“Lend me five hundred.”

“Certainly!” Crosset lunged at his desk, scribbled a line to the cashier, and handed it to Bob, then, in response to a call from the customers’ room, dashed away with a hearty farewell.

As Bob passed through the outer office he ran his eye over the opening prices, being half inclined to “scalp” with his sudden wealth; but luck had never run his way, and he reconsidered.  Anyhow, there were more agreeable uses to which he could put this money; for one thing he needed several suits, for another it was high time he gave Lorelei some little remembrance—­he hadn’t given her a present in nearly two weeks, and women set great store by such attentions.  He decided to invest his money in Maiden Lane and demand credit from his tailor.  But a half-hour at a jewelry shop convinced him that nothing suitable to so splendid a creature as his wife could be purchased for a paltry five hundred dollars, and he was upon the point of returning to Crosset with a request to double the loan when his common sense asserted itself.  Poverty was odious, but not shameful, he reflected; ostentation, on the other hand, was vulgar.  Would it not be in bad taste to squander this happy windfall upon jewelry when Lorelei needed practical things?

Bob was cheered by the breadth of these sentiments; they showed that he was beginning soberly to realize the leaden responsibilities of a family man.  No, instead of a jewel he would buy his wife a dog.

At a fashionable up-town kennel he found exactly what he wanted, in the shape of a Pekingese—­a playful, pedigreed pocket dog scarcely larger than his two fists.  It was a creature to excite the admiration of any woman; its family tree was taller than that of a Spanish nobleman, and its name was Ying.  But here again Bob was handicapped by poverty, for sleeve dogs are expensive novelties, and the price of Ying was seven hundred dollars—­marked down from one thousand, and evidently the bargain of a lifetime at that price.

Bob hated to haggle, but he showed that his ability to drive a sharp bargain was merely latent, and he finally bore the animal away in triumph.  To outgeneral a dog-fancier was a tribute to his shrewdness; to save two hundred dollars on a single purchase was economy of a high order.  Much elated, he set out briskly for his tailor’s place of business.

CHAPTER XXI

It still lacked something of luncheon-time when Bob Wharton swung into Fifth Avenue with Ying snugly ensconced in his coat pocket.  Bob was in fine fettle, what with the anticipation of Lorelei’s delight at his gift and the certainty of an agreeable hour with his tailor.  It was always a pleasure to deal with Kurtz, for in his shop customers were treated with the most delicate consideration.  Salesmen, cutters, fitters, all were pleasant acquaintances who displayed neither the fawning obsequiousness of Fifth Avenue