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Rh I am keeping the old folks' home-fires burning as well as my own place going. My wife and I have as cozy an apartment as anyone could wish to see."

He paused, not for breath, though you might think it, but for the artistic effect. The rapid mental calculation I made in the moment's silence, certainly left me impressed. Four or five thousand a year! I looked at my interlocutor with fresh interest. He appeared to my mature eyes not much more than a slip of a boy. Must I begin to revise my ideas of commercial life? Belonging myself to the professional class of fixed incomes (fixed at none too high a figure), prosperity of the sliding scale variety had never appealed to my imagination. I hope we do not indulge any "better than thou" spirit towards our commercial neighbors, and that we hold all honest labor in due respect, but I have entertained in my own house so many men of weight and influence whose incomes were considerably below that mentioned by the vacuum-cleaner gentleman that naturally my sense of values was challenged.

"Of course," I said, "there are some things