e 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."

March laughed at his impudence, but at heart he was ashamed of Fulkerson
for proposing to make use of Dryfoos and his house in that way. He
fancied something appealing in the look that the old man turned on him,
and something indignant in Conrad's flush; but probably this was only his
fancy. He reflected that neither of them could feel it as