en he first came home DeLancey was put in the bank in order that he
might work up by degrees into the bond business or some other auriferous
form of toil. Wert Payley almost had nervous prostration from overwork
that year, and in the end he had to give up. He couldn't carry his own
load and make DeLancey work too. It was too much. No human being should
be asked to do it. Wert often says that if he had had nothing else to do
he could have kept DeLancey at work at least part of the time, but that
he was too old to shoulder the task on top of his other duties. So
DeLancey left the bank, except as an enthusiastic check casher, and took
up his life work--I mean that, of course, figuratively. I mean his life
occupation--hang it, that won't do either! He took up his mission--the
work for which his ardent young soul was fitted. He began to specialize
in leisure.

For close to nine years DeLancey has loafed. It is a miracle to us. We
can't understand his endurance. Yet he thrives on it. Wert Payley has
given up trying to make him work, but he has taken what he considers to
be an awful revenge. He has refused to spend one cent for carfare.
DeLancey can hang around Homeburg until he dies, but if he wants to
leave, he must earn the money himself. And DeLancey hasn't been fifty
miles from Homeburg since he slipped the clutch out of his tired,
throbbing brain and let it rest, nine years ago.

We have to admire his ingenuity. He kills time so scientifically. They
say it takes him two hours to do himself up in the morning after he gets
out of bed, and that he has almost as many beautifying tools as an
actress. He doesn't get down-town before ten. It takes him from fifteen
minutes to half an hour to buy his morning cigar. That is, he talks to
McMuggins, the druggist, as long as Mac will stand for it. Mac has a
regular schedule. If Delancey buys a ten-cent cigar, Mac will talk with
him fifteen minutes. If he buys a fifteen-cent cigar, he will talk half
an hour, if business isn't too brisk. Mac keeps a box of fifteen-cent
cigars especially for DeLancey, but he says it is an awful risk. If
DeLancey were to die on him, he couldn't sell those cigars in a hundred
years.

The tellers at the bank are good for fifteen minutes or so after
DeLancey has bought his cigar; he strolls in and gossips with them
until his father begins to snort ominously in his little railed-off pen
marked "President." Cooney Simpson, the tailor, likes DeLancey, and th