ey
talk clothes for half an hour almost every morning. Then it's noon, and
this is his hardest problem, because every one goes to dinner at noon
except the Payleys and Singers, who have luncheon at one. If DeLancey
can find Sam Singer, he is all right. But Sam, who used to loaf
enthusiastically with him, has rosy ideas about Mabel Andrews now, and
he is working hard in his father's bank and on the farms. It was a
bitter day for DeLancey when Sam went to work. It almost shook his faith
in idleness. But he stood firm.

Luncheon kills two hours for DeLancey, and then he goes up to the
Homeburg Commercial Club and shoots the pool balls around the table
until 4:30, waiting eagerly for some one to stop working and come to
play with him. Sometimes they come and sometimes they don't. If they
don't, he goes down to the hotel and talks with a traveling man. I often
see him in the lobby of the Delmonico, sitting in magnificent ease,
blowing large smoke rings and talking with an air of unconscious
grandeur to some eager-eyed drummer, who is delighted but mystified at
the ease with which he is breaking into the first families. DeLancey has
a quiet way of talking about the East and the great people thereof which
fools even us sometimes.

DeLancey makes his toilet after dinner at night and that of course kills
an hour or more. Then he calls on Madeline Hicks, old Judge Hicks's
daughter, when she will let him. He has an idea he would like to marry
her, but while she likes him, they say she can't bring herself to marry
a man of leisure and have the whole town sorry for her. But he takes her
to all the parties, and about once a week his father lets him have the
automobile, if the chauffeur doesn't want to use it. On other nights
DeLancey comes down-town and buys another cigar at the restaurant. It is
as good as a show to see DeLancey buy his evening cigar. You'd think he
was taking over a railroad, he chooses it with such care. The young
farmer boys and the workers in the factory come down-town at night and
loaf around the restaurants without any excuse. They have to kill the
time. But that would be too coarse work for DeLancey. He doesn't come
down-town to loaf--Oh, no! He has merely dropped in on his orbit. It
takes him half the evening to buy his cigar and smoke it, conversing as
he does so with a few selected citizens on the benefits of slim-cut
clothes and the origin of the pussy-cat hat.

Sometimes DeLancey can abduct some busy