I suppose, if
anyone asked you where you had your lunch, you would say, 'Oh, at a
thingamajig for mutton chops'... Ginger, my lad, there is something in
this. I believe for the first time in our acquaintance you have spoken
something very nearly resembling a mouthful. You're wonderful with dogs,
aren't you?"

"I'm dashed keen on them, and I've studied them a bit. As a matter of
fact, though it seems rather like swanking, there isn't much about dogs
that I don't know."

"Of course. I believe you're a sort of honorary dog yourself. I could
tell it by the way you stopped that fight at Roville. You plunged into a
howling mass of about a million hounds of all species and just whispered
in their ears and they stopped at once. Why, the more one examines this,
the better it looks. I do believe it's the one thing you couldn't help
making a success of. It's very paying, isn't it?"

"Works out at about a hundred per cent on the original outlay, I've been
told."

"A hundred per cent? That sounds too much like something of Fillmore's
for comfort. Let's say ninety-nine and be conservative. Ginger, you
have hit it. Say no more. You shall be the Dog King, the biggest
thingamajigger for dogs in the country. But how do you start?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, while I was up at White Plains, I ran into
a cove who had a place of the sort and wanted to sell out. That was what
made me think of it."

"You must start to-day. Or early to-morrow."

"Yes," said Ginger doubtfully. "Of course, there's the catch, you know."

"What catch?"

"The capital. You've got to have that. This fellow wouldn't sell out
under five thousand dollars."

"I'll lend you five thousand dollars."

"No!" said Ginger.

Sally looked at him with exasperation. "Ginger, I'd like to slap you,"
she said. It was maddening, this intrusion of sentiment into business
affairs. Why, simply because he was a man and she was a woman,
should she be restrained from investing money in a sound commercial
undertaking? If Columbus had taken up this bone-headed stand towards
Queen Isabella, America would never have been discovered.

"I can't take five thousand dollars off you," said Ginger firmly.

"Who's talking of taking it off me, as you call it?" stormed Sally.
"Can't you forget your burglarious career for a second? This isn't the
same thing as going about stealing defenceless girls' photographs. This
is business. I think you would make an enormous success of a dog-place,