Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/435

 in crook investment-offices—and I've never seen a nicer cutie than you anywhere. How 'bout lil dinner one of these beauteous evenings? I expect I'll parley-vous with thou full often now—I'm a great friend of Doc Arrowsmith. Fact I'm a doc myself—honest—real sawbones—went to medic school and everything. Ah! Here's the boy!"

Martin had not allowed for the changes of fourteen years. He was dismayed.

Clif Clawson, at forty, was gross. His face was sweaty, and puffy with pale flesh; his voice was raw; he fancied checked Norfolk jackets, tight across his swollen shoulders and his beefy hips.

He bellowed, while he belabored Martin's back:

"Well, well, well, well, well, well! Old Mart! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you old son of a gun! Why, you damn' old chicken-thief! Say, you skinny little runt, I'm a son of a gun if you look one day older'n when I saw you last in Zenith!"

Martin was aware of the bright leering of the once humble reception-clerk. He said, "Well, gosh, it certainly is good to see you," and hastened to get Clif into the privacy of his office.

"You look fine," he lied, when they were safe. "What you been doing with yourself? Leora and I did our best to look you up, when we first came to New York. Uh— Do you know about, uh, about her?"

"Yuh, I read about her passing away. Fierce luck. And about your swell work in the West Indies—where was it? I guess you're a great man now—famous plague-chaser and all that stuff, and world-renowned skee-entist. I don't suppose you remember your old friends now."

"Oh, don't be a chump! It's—it's—it's fine to see you."

"Well, I'm glad to observe you haven't got the capitus enlargatus, Mart. Golly, I says to meself says I, if I blew in and old Mart high-hatted me, I'd just about come nigh unto letting him hear the straight truth, after all the compliments he's been getting from the sassiety dames. I'm glad you've kept your head. I thought about writing you from Butte—been selling some bum oil-stock there and kind of got out quick to save the inspectors the trouble of looking over my books. 'Well,' I thought, 'I'll just sit down and write the whey-faced runt a letter, and make him feel good by telling