Montague sat with knitted brows, pondering.’  He was beginning to see a little daylight now.  “Oliver,” he asked suddenly, “are you sure the stakes in this game aren’t too big?”

“How do you mean?” asked the other.

“Will you be able to stay in until the show-down?  Until either Alice or myself begins to bring in some returns?”

“Never worry about that,” said the other, with a laugh.

“But hadn’t you better take me into your confidence?” Montague persisted.  “How many weeks can you pay our rent in this place?  Have you got the money to pay for all these clothes?”

“I’ve got it,” laughed the other—­“but that doesn’t say I’m going to pay it.”

“Don’t you have to pay your bills?  Can we do all this upon credit?”

Oliver laughed again.  “You go at me like a prosecuting attorney,” he said.  “I’m afraid you’ll have to inquire around and learn some respect for your brother.”  Then he added, seriously, “You see, Allan, people like Reggie or myself are in position to bring a great deal of custom to tradespeople, and so they are willing to go out of their way to oblige us.  And we have commissions of all sorts coming to us, so it’s never any question of cash.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the other, opening his eyes, “I see!  Is that the way you make money?”

“It’s one of the ways we save it,” said Oliver.  “It comes to the same thing.”

“Do people know it?”

“Why, of course.  Why not?”

“I don’t know,” said Montague.  “It sounds a little queer.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Oliver.  “Some of the best people in New York do it.  Strangers come to the city, and they want to go to the right places, and they ask me, and I send them.  Or take Robbie Walling, who keeps up five or six establishments, and spends several millions a year.  He can’t see to it all personally—­if he did, he’d never do anything else.  Why shouldn’t he ask a friend to attend to things for him?  Or again, a now shop opens, and they want Mrs. Waiting’s trade for the sake of the advertising, and they offer her a discount and me a commission.  Why shouldn’t I get her to try them?”

“It’s quite intricate,” commented the other.  “The stores have more than one price, then?”

“They have as many prices as they have customers,” was the answer.  “Why shouldn’t they?  New York is full of raw rich people who value things by what they pay.  And why shouldn’t they pay high and be happy?  That opera-cloak that Alice has—­Reval promised it to me for two thousand, and I’ll wager you she’d charge some woman from Butte, Montana, thirty-five hundred for one just like it.”

Montague got up suddenly.  “Stop,” he said, waving his hands.  “You take all the bloom off the butterfly’s wings!”

He asked where they were going that evening, and Oliver said that they were invited to an informal dinner-party at Mrs. Winnie Duval’s.  Mrs. Winnie was the young widow who had recently married the founder of the great banking-house of Puval and Co.—­so Oliver explained; she was a chum of his, and they would meet an interesting set there.  She was going to invite her cousin, Charlie Carter—­she wanted him to meet Alice.  “Mrs. Winnie’s always plotting to get Charlie to settle down,” said Oliver, with a merry laugh.