"Oh, in an office!" I said. (I didn't tell her I was the Third
Vice President of the Amalgamated Copper Company, with a twenty-
story building on lower Broadway. Wild horses couldn't have wrung
it out of me then.)
"You're too nice for an office," she said, looking at me so
sweetly and sadly. "You ought to be a gentleman!"
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed, "I hope I am that, even if I do grub
along in an office." I wish my partners could have heard me say
that. Why, I have a private elevator of my own and a squash-court
on the roof!
"Of course, I don't mean that," she went on quickly, "but like us,
I mean, with a castle and a place in society----"
"I have a sort of little picayune place in New York," I
interrupted. "I don't SLEEP in the office, you know. At night I go
out and see my friends and sometimes they invite me to dinner."
She looked at me more sadly than ever. I don't believe humour was
Verna's strong suit anyway,--not American humour, at least,--for
she not only believed what I said, but more too.
"I must speak to Papa about you," she said.
"What will he do?" I asked.
"Oh, help you along, you know," she said; "ffrenches always stand
together; it's a family trait, though it's dying out now for lack
of ffrenches. You know our family motto?" she went on.
"I'm afraid I don't," I said.
"'Ffrenches first!'" she returned.
I had to laugh.
"We've lived up to it in America," I said.
"Papa is quite a power in the City," she said.
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