allowed to stay here for the next four months and take painting
lessons from Jorgensen. I intend to have a studio of my own. I'm to live
at the Martha Putnam hotel, which, as you know, never, never allows a
man farther through its doors than the waiting room. Happy? I'm so happy
I could shout!"

"Then you've no longer any interest in the business?" inquired Jimmy,
for the want of something better to say.

She looked out of the taxi-window for an instant, as if recalling
something and then said, slowly, "Yes, to tell the truth I have. It
means so much. I'll admit that I'm more or less a business person. I
like to see things grow bigger and bigger, and sell more and more, and
get to mean something. Not that the dollars and cents count so much,
after a time, but because a name somehow becomes a standard. Yes, I
shall miss what you call the business; but, after all, it will not stop
because I'm not there to enthuse over it, and----" She interrupted
herself with a half-suppressed laugh--"Mother doesn't look at things
exactly as I do. She detests it and is ashamed of it, I have an ideal!"

Jimmy never quite idealized the chocolate trade before; but there was
something rather fine in what she said, he thought. After all, maybe it
was one form of Americanism that she had voiced, and it became a trifle
nobler when he considered that it meant industry, energy, and honesty.
To do something and do it well. To be proud of doing something well. To
be proud that one wasn't a loafer or a drone, or a parasite on the body
economic. He was striving to correlate all this when made aware that the
taxi had stopped and that they were at their destination. He actually
submitted to an overcharge of a half-dollar inflicted by the
hatchet-faced brigand who had jerked his taxi-meter over with a bang
before his fares had time to inspect it. And then, resolving to forget
everything save the fact that they were entering the Horse Show, and
that he was somehow treading in ether because he had found a girl who
was different from all others, he became himself again.

"We're not so very late after all," he exclaimed as he glanced up at the
big tower clock. "I thought I waited an hour for you. But, anyhow, here
we are, and now for it!"

They sauntered in and he was proud to observe that many eyes were
turned in the direction of his companion. It made him feel rather
egotistical, for there were many girls there well worth looking at, and
people don't