hat trunk key you've been lookin' for?" says I.

"No," says she. "A business opening."

"A slot-machine to sell fudge?" says I.

"You'd never guess," says she.

"Then shoot it," says I.

"I'm going to open a shoe-shinery," she announces.

"Wha-a-a-at!" says I.

"Only I'm not going to call it that," she goes on. "It isn't to be a
'parlor,' either, nor a 'shine shop.' It's to be just a 'Boots.' Right
here in the building. I've leased part of the basement. See?" And she
waves a paper at me.

"Quit your kiddin'," says I.

But she insists that it's so. Sure enough, that's the way the lease
reads.

And that's when, as I was tellin' you, I rises up majestic and announces
flat that she simply can't do a thing like that. Also she comes back at
me just as prompt by sayin' that she can and will. It's the first time
we've met head-on goin' different ways, and I had just sense enough to
throw in my emergency before the crash came.

"Now let's get this straight," says I. "I don't suppose you're plannin'
to do shoe-shinin' yourself?"

Vee smiles and shakes her head.

"Or 'tend the cash register and sell shoelaces and gum to gentlemen
customers?"

"Oh, it's not to be that sort of place," says she. "It's to be an
English 'boots,' on a large scale. You know what I mean."

"No," says I.

So she sketches out the enterprise for me. Instead of a reg'lar Tony
joint with a row of chairs and a squad of blue-shirted Greeks jabberin'
about the war, this is to be a chairless, spittoonless shine factory,
where the customer only steps in to sign a monthly contract or register
a kick. All the work is to be collected and delivered, same as laundry.

"I would never have thought of it," explains Vee, "if it hadn't been for
Tarkins. He's that pasty-faced, sharp-nosed young fellow who's been
helping the janitor recently. A cousin, I believe. He's a war wreck,
too. Just think, Torchy: he was in the trenches for more than a year,
and has only been out of a base hospital two months. They wouldn't let
him enlist again; so he came over here to his relatives.

"It was while he was up trying to stop that radiator leak the other day
that I asked him if he would take out a pair of my boots and find some
place where they could be cleaned. He brought them back inside of half
an hour, beautifully done. And when I insisted on being told where he'd
taken them, so that I might send them to the same place again, he
admitted that he had done the wo