lp bury
our worst enemy. That's what business does to the dear old college days
when it gets a good bite at them. There we were, one year out of Siwash,
breaking forty-five reunion dates, and never even sitting around with
our heads in our hands over it. This business bug is a bad, bad biter
all right. Just let it get its tooth into you, and what do you care if
some other fellow is smoking your two-quart pipe back in the old chapter
house? And for that matter, what do you care about anything else until
you get up far enough to take breath and look around? Sometimes, after a
couple of weeks of extra hard work, I've taken my mind off invoices long
enough to wag it around a bit and I've felt like a swimmer coming up
after a long dive.

We landed those promotions in July and went right after another pair. I
got mine in August--Allie in September. And along in December they
called us both up in the office, where the big crash was. He said nice
things to us about getting a chance to fire our own chauffeurs if we
kept on tending to business, and first thing we knew we had offices of
our own in the back of the building, with our names painted on the
doors, and call-bells that brought stenographers and the same old brand
of office boys that used to blow us out of the other offices along with
their cigarette smoke. And we realized then that if we worked like
thunder for thirty years more and saved our money and made it earn one
hundred per cent, perhaps some of the real business kings would notice
us on the street some day. That's about the way the college swelling
goes down.

All this time we hadn't seen much of Jarvis. He'd stopped coming to the
cafe and we'd really been so busy that we almost forgot about him. It's
simply wonderful the things business will drive out of your mind. It
wasn't until late in the winter that we realized that we'd probably lost
track of Jarvis for good--that is, until we climbed up into his set and
discovered him at some dinner that was a page out of the social
register. We mixed around a lot more now. We went to the
million-candle-power restaurants every now and then, and ate a good deal
more than sixty-five cents' worth apiece without batting an eye; and we
went to see a play occasionally and didn't climb up into the rarefied
atmosphere to find our seats, either. And whenever we broke in with the
limousine crowd we kept a bright lookout for Jarvis. We wanted to see
him and show him that we were c