ants to
ride in the elevator, too, Mr. Gembitz."

Thus admonished, Sam entered the car and a moment later he found
himself on the sidewalk. Instinctively he walked toward the subway
station, although he had intended to return to Henry Schrimm's office;
but, before he again became conscious of his surroundings, he was
seated in a Lenox Avenue express with an early edition of the evening
paper held upside down before him.

"_Nah_, well," he said to himself, "what is the difference? I wouldn't
try to do no more business to-day."

He straightened up the paper and at once commenced to study the
financial page. Unknown to his children, he had long rented a
safe-deposit box, in which reposed ten first-mortgage bonds of a
trunkline railroad, together with a few shares of stock purchased by
him during the Northern Pacific panic. He noted, with a satisfied grin,
that the stock showed a profit of fifty points, while the bonds had
advanced three eighths of a point.

"Three eighths ain't much," he muttered as he sat still while the train
left One Hundred and Sixteenth Street station, "but there is a whole
lot of _rabonim_ which would marry you for less than thirty-seven
dollars and fifty cents."

He threw the paper to the floor as the train stopped at One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street and, without a moment's hesitation, ascended to the
street level and walked two blocks north to One Hundred and
Twenty-seventh Street. There he rang the basement bell of an
old-fashioned brown-stone residence and Mrs. Schrimm in person opened
the door. When she observed her visitor she shook her head slowly from
side to side and emitted inarticulate sounds through her nose,
indicative of extreme commiseration.

"Ain't you going to get the devil when Babette sees you!" she said at
last. "Mrs. Krakauer tells her six times over the 'phone already you
just went home."

"Could I help it what that woman tells Babette?" Sam asked. "And,
anyhow, Henrietta, what do I care what Mrs. Krakauer tells Babette or
what Babette tells Mrs. Krakauer? And, furthermore, Henrietta, Babette
could never give me the devil no more!"

"No?" Mrs. Schrimm said as she led the way to the dining-room. "You're
talking awful big, Sam, for a feller which he never calls his soul his
own in his own home yet."

"Them times is past, Henrietta," Sam answered as he sat down and
removed his hat. "To-day things begin differently for me, Henrietta;
because, Henrietta, you and me i