tell you what _I'm_ going to do," said Lucille. "I'm going
to get Bill to introduce me to his Mabel, and, if she's as nice as he
says she is, _I'll_ go to father and talk convincingly to him."

"You're an ace!" said Bill.

"Absolutely!" agreed Archie cordially. "MY partner, what! All the same,
we ought to keep the book as a second string, you know. I mean to say,
you are a young and delicately nurtured girl--full of sensibility and
shrinking what's-its-name and all that--and you know what the jolly old
pater is. He might bark at you and put you out of action in the first
round. Well, then, if anything like that happened, don't you see, we
could unleash old Bill, the trained silver-tongued expert, and let him
have a shot. Personally, I'm all for the P. that W.'s."-"Me, too," said
Bill.

Lucille looked at her watch.

"Good gracious! It's nearly one o'clock!"

"No!" Archie heaved himself up from his chair. "Well, it's a shame to
break up this feast of reason and flow of soul and all that, but, if we
don't leg it with some speed, we shall be late."

"We're lunching at the Nicholson's!" explained Lucille to her brother.
"I wish you were coming too."

"Lunch!" Bill shook his head with a kind of tolerant scorn. "Lunch means
nothing to me these days. I've other things to think of besides food."
He looked as spiritual as his rugged features would permit. "I haven't
written to Her yet to-day."

"But, dash it, old scream, if she's going to be over here in a week,
what's the good of writing? The letter would cross her."

"I'm not mailing my letters to England." said Bill. "I'm keeping them
for her to read when she arrives."

"My sainted aunt!" said Archie.

Devotion like this was something beyond his outlook.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE SAUSAGE CHAPPIE

The personality that wins cost Archie two dollars in cash and a lot of
embarrassment when he asked for it at the store. To buy a treatise of
that name would automatically seem to argue that you haven't a winning
personality already, and Archie was at some pains to explain to the girl
behind the counter that he wanted it for a friend. The girl seemed more
interested in his English accent than in his explanation, and Archie
was uncomfortably aware, as he receded, that she was practising it in an
undertone for the benefit of her colleagues and fellow-workers. However,
what is a little discomfort, if endured in friendship's name?

He was proceeding up Broadway after lea