licately
as a cat, and wheedled, "Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Hanson."

"Whajuh wanta see him for?"

"I just want to talk to him. Here's my card."

It was a beautiful card, an engraved card, a card in the blackest black
and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. George F. Babbitt was Estates,
Insurance, Rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds,
and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from
his episcopal dignity, but he growled, "I'll see if he's around."

From the back room he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet
sharp-eyed man, in tan silk shirt, checked vest hanging open, and
burning brown trousers--Mr. Healey Hanson. Mr. Hanson said only "Yuh?"
but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Babbitt's soul, and he
seemed not at all impressed by the new dark-gray suit for which (as he
had admitted to every acquaintance at the Athletic Club) Babbitt had
paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

"Glad meet you, Mr. Hanson. Say, uh--I'm George Babbitt of the
Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. I'm a great friend of Jake Offutt's."

"Well, what of it?"

"Say, uh, I'm going to have a party, and Jake told me you'd be able to
fix me up with a little gin." In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Hanson's
eyes grew more bored, "You telephone to Jake about me, if you want to."

Hanson answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the
back room, and strolled away. Babbitt melodramatically crept into
an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery
calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Healey Hanson saunter
through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.

By this time Babbitt had modified his valiant morning vow, "I won't pay
one cent over seven dollars a quart" to "I might pay ten." On Hanson's
next weary entrance he besought "Could you fix that up?" Hanson scowled,
and grated, "Just a minute--Pete's sake--just a min-ute!" In growing
meekness Babbitt went on waiting till Hanson casually reappeared with
a quart of gin--what is euphemistically known as a quart--in his
disdainful long white hands.

"Twelve bucks," he snapped.

"Say, uh, but say, cap'n, Jake thought you'd be able to fix me up for
eight or nine a bottle."

"Nup. Twelve. This is the real stuff, smuggled from Canada. This is
none o' your neutral spirits with a drop of juniper extract," the honest
merchant said virtuously. "Twelve bones--if you want it. Course y'
un