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 seven or so and she twenty-two, he took her to Paris; but recently he'd slunk back to his home city.

Now it had never occurred to me until this moment that, in the general excitement over Winton's rejuvenation, nobody asked much about Shirley. The spotlight simply wasn't swung her way.

There she was where several wives—three or four, I couldn't remember—had been before her and where, if rejuvenation really meant a return to old Win's youth, several more would stand again.

The sons—they were Kenyon and Fred, about my own age and both by the original Mrs. Winton Scofield—astutely realized this and did a little deal in self-defense. They took over the grain business, when the old man was honeymooning, retiring father on an income, leaving him no vote or interest in the firm which a wife, past or present or future, could attach.

Perhaps this had something to do with his floating back to Chicago; perhaps his present wife worked that for purposes about to become plainer.

I arranged for Fred to lunch with me and, as