ble opening occurred. I could take the item of shirts alone that had
to be made to order and cost seven-fifty each, to say nothing of collars
and ties and suits from what Clyde said was the only tailor in New York
that could dress a gentleman so he looked like one. She said if these
funny humourists could see what they spent on her clothes and what they
had to spend on Clyde's, she bet they'd feel mighty cheap. She laughed
like she had a bully joke on the poor things.

She was glad, too, for Clyde's sake that a suitable opening was just
about to occur any moment, because the poor chap said himself it was a
dog's life he was leading, with nothing much to do every day but go to
the club and set round. And how thankful she'd ought to be that he never
drank--the least bit of liquor made him ill--and so many young men of
his class nowadays drank to excess.

No; nothing for me to say and nothing to do. Here was one happy love
match. So I come home, making Vida promise to write often.

She did write about six times in the next three years. The chief fact
standing out was that the right opening for Clyde hadn't opened yet--and
he was getting more impatient every day. He always had something in view.
But I judged he was far-sighted. And some way when he had got his rope
over a job the hondoo wouldn't seem to render. He couldn't cinch
anything. He was as full of blandishment as ever, though, and not a one
of his staunch old friends had dropped him on account of his unfortunate
marriage. He was a great diner-out and spent lots of week-ends, and just
now was on a jolly houseboat in Florida for three months with an old
college mate worth nine million dollars, and wasn't that nice! She could
just see him keeping the whole party gay with his mandolin and his songs.
The summer before that this same friend had let Clyde have an elegant
motor car for his own use, and the foolish boy had actually took her out
in it one Sunday, there being a pongee motor coat in the car that fit her
beautifully so that none of his rich friends could have told she wasn't
dressed as smartly as they was. He not only kept her out all afternoon,
but would have took her to dinner some place only she had to get back to
the boarding house because you couldn't trust these raw Swedes.

And there was one thing she was going to bring herself to confess to
me, no matter if it did sound disloyal--a dreadful thing about Clyde.
It was ugly of her to breathe a word again