Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/36

 "Thanks," he said. "How was business here?" he asked, deliberately switching the subject from his concerns during the two days between semesters in which he had been home. "How'd it go with you, Lan?"

"Business was a complete washout," Lan confessed promptly and emphatically. "Or rather, I was. Dave, how in the devil do you put it over all the time?"

"I don't," Dave denied, seriously.

Lan laughed and dug in his pocket for cards concerned with this business to which Dave had transferred attention. "Oh, no; it's too darned bad about you. You don't know anything about the auto game at all! You'll simply step in to-morrow to see those guys that have been giving me the gate and have them eating out of your hand; or maybe you won't bother to call; just phone 'em. Here's your cards."

Lan tossed them on the desk and Dave turned and picked them up, thoughtfully, and bending slightly he opened a long, narrow box half full of such index cards; he put the returned ones in place and glanced over some others.

"No," said Lan, seeing this and stopping him. "No use to give me a crack at any more prospects, old top; I'm absolutely helpless and screaming for mercy when I try your game. If Myra has to wait for me to learn that before we're married, I've a wonderful chance, haven't I?"

Dave closed his box without argument. "Plenty of money made in your game, Lan," he reminded.

"Maybe," admitted Lan. "Four years from now,