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 esthetic foster sisters of both sexes. Particularly if his lot is cast outside of New York city.”

“There you go: disparaging our Latin Quarter again. Where’s your civic pride? where’s your common courtesy, even? Even the dog won’t bite the hand that holds the bread.”

“Corn belt,” the other said shortly, “Indiana talking. You people up there are born with the booster complex, aren’t you? Or do you acquire it with sunburned necks?”

“Oh, well, we Nordics are at a disadvantage,” Fairchild replied. His tone was unctuous, the other detected something falsely frank in it. “We’ve got to fix our idea on a terrestrial place. Though we know it’s second rate, that’s the best we can do. But your people have got all heaven for your old home town, you know.”

“I could forgive everything except the unpardonable clumsiness of that,” the other told him. “Your idea is not bad. Why don’t you give it to Mark Frost—roughly, you know—and let him untangle it for you? You and he could both use it then—if you are quick enough, that is.”

Fairchild laughed. “Now, you lay off our New Orleans bohemian life; stay away from us if you don’t like it. I like it, myself: there is a kind of charming futility about it, like—”

“Like a country club where they play croquet instead of golf,” the other supplied for him.

“Well, yes,” Fairchild agreed. “Something like that.” The warehouse loomed above them, and they passed into it and amid the ghosts of the ends of the earth. “A croquet player may not be much of a go-getter, but what do you think of a man that just sits around and criticizes croquet?”

“Well, I’m like the rest of you immortals: I’ve got to pass the time in some way in order to gain some idea of how to