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R. LARRY, settling his stalwart shoulders into his overcoat, stopped and looked down with a smile at the pink-tipped finger peeping through the buttonhole in his left-hand lapel. He had come to recognize certain wifely signs. Mrs. Larry's finger attached to this particular buttonhole indicated that Mrs. Larry's gray matter was twisting itself into an interrogation point.

"Well?" he prompted.

"Um-m!" she murmured; then, with sudden accession of courage: "Larry, when you went to South Bethlehem looking for a new foundry to buy castings, what did the old man say?"

"The old man?" echoed Mr. Larry.

"Yes, the man where you had been buying