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 denly the relation of buyer and seller between Phil Metten and himself. Of course, he was not yet a salesman, but he was returning to Chicago to work for the firm. He had told his wife so. This man was a customer of the firm and a most important one. Moreover, at this moment, his business was "in the air"; the Slengels were after it, Ellen Powell had said, as they had been after the Nucast account in New York. The Nucast business which, after having been nearly lost to Rountree, had become "safe" for the next year, through Lida!

Jay turned toward the Tavern, at recollection that he had not told Lida that these people were customers of his father's company. When they had been announced, he had thought of them only as people out of their place and looking to him for help. But they were, of course, customers. He must tell Lida. What would she think of him, if she learned it from them?

Lida and the Mettens had disappeared; and Jay, regarding Phil's paternal, friendly face, dismissed any comparison of his character with Nucast's. There was no likeness at all between the two men, except that both were buyers and each used the power of his position. What was it that Phil Metten meant when he mentioned, in the first minute after meeting Jay here, that he had left Chicago without signing up his order for next year? He was holding it open, in other words, as a possible reward to Jay and Lida Rountree for good behavior.

Jay went on with Metten to the tee where a couple of young men, guests at the Tavern, were waiting for a foursome. Ramsey and Harris were their names; from Pittsburgh, both of them, and here at Tryston with their wives.