Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/91

 suite. (Thirty days into five hundred dollars the month.) Christmas dinner, already ordered, would cost twenty-five dollars. Forty-nine sixty-six, not counting supper, he would spend on living to-day; and he would not feel it. Phil Metten could spend it every day, and not feel it. The fact was still fresh enough to seem, at moments, incredible.

Phil was dressed for the day in a new, gray suit; Emma amply was clothed in a new, gold-brocaded kimono; their daughters, slim and dark, drew close to them breakfast robes, one of blue and the other of salmon satin.

"A friend of mine, mamma," Phil announced, catching his wife's eye, "is married."

"Uh?" said mamma. "Do you give him a gift?"

"He is a very nice boy, mamma. I give his papa business; four hundred and forty-five thousand, gross, he has from me this year. That is some business. Look who he married."

Proprietorily, he passed over the paper which Emma received in bediamonded hands and held close to her soft, eyes. Her daughters arose and read, over her shoulders.

"She is certainly swell looking," approved mamma.

"She is in society, mamma."

"Do you know him, personal, papa?" asked Ruby, looking across at her father with her lovely, liquid eyes.

Personal association with such a young lady as Lida represented to Emma, and her daughters, a goal manifestly impossible of complete attainment yet perhaps to be approximated in the wonderful, unfolding world of papa's prosperity.