dles! Fiddles and emeralds! What a choice old hypocrite he was!

Fate has a way of telling you all about it--afterward; conceivably, that
humanity might continue to reproduce its species. Otherwise humanity
would proceed to extinguish itself forthwith. Thus, Cutty was totally
unaware upon entering the shop that he was about to tear off its hinges
the door he was so carefully bolting and latching and padlocking between
Kitty Conover and this duffer who wanted to fiddle his way through
convalescence.

Where there is fiddling there is generally dancing. If it be not the
feet, then it will be the soul.

CHAPTER XVIII

There are some men who know a little about all things and a great deal
about many. Such a man was Cutty. But as he approached the counter
behind which stood an expectant clerk he felt for once that he was in a
far country. There were fiddles and fiddles, just as there were emeralds
and emeralds. Never again would he laugh over the story of the man who
thought Botticelli was a manufacturer of spool thread. He attacked the
problem, however, like the thoroughbred he was--frankly.

"I want to buy a violin," he began, knowing that in polite musical
circles the word fiddle was taboo. "I know absolutely nothing at all
about quality or price. Understand, though, while you might be able to
fool me, you wouldn't fool the man I'm buying it for. Now what would you
suggest?"

The clerk--a salesman familiar with certain urban types, thinly
including the Fifth Avenue, which came in for talking-machine
records--recognized in this well-dressed, attractive elderly man that
which he designated the swell. Hateful word, yes, but having a perfectly
legitimate niche, since in the minds of the hoi polloi it nicely
describes the differences between the poor gentleman and the gentleman
of leisure. To proceed with the digression, to no one is the word more
hateful than to the individual to whom it is applied. Cutty would have
blushed at the clerk's thought.

"Perhaps I'd better get the proprietor," was the clerk's suggestion.

"Good idea," Cutty agreed. "Take my card along with you." This was
a Fifth Avenue shop, and Cutty knew there would be a Who's Who or a
Bradstreet somewhere about.

In the interim he inspected the case-lined walls. Trombones. He
chuckled. Lucky that Hawksley's talent didn't extend in this direction.
True, he himself collected drums, but he did not play them. Something
odd about music; human beings