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 see—we'll double the staff and put it on a real money-making basis."

"Money bores me," said Paul.

Pat exploded. "Be a bloody pauper then—and to hell with you!"

Paul sat staring into space.

"I hate to let you be so doggone fat-headed," Pat came back to the charge. "Gee, if I had your style, why I'd just about run Egypt. There ain't a thing we couldn't pull off here, if you stuck around. Where do you think you'll finally get off at if you go on chuckin' up chances like you been doin' all your life? Why nowhere—that's where it'll be. It's plain suicide."

"If life consists in wheedling orders out of tight-fisted merchants," Paul proclaimed, with a return of his cynical humour, "then I prefer suicide. Failure is more interesting than success; for there's only one way to succeed and there are a thousand picturesque ways of failing. . . . Besides, you have Beatie now. She'll take my place."

Pat had an idea. "Listen here sonny," he said, as though offering a bait that no sane man would resist. "Why don't you stay and marry Ivy Markwick? Beatie and I were talking about it. Ivy'd jump at it."

"I don't want to be jumped at," retorted Paul with a trace of petulance. "Nor clung to."

Pat's efforts were in vain, and a month later he drove Paul to the railway station in the shiny car. "Well, if you change your mind any," said Pat in farewell, "just send me a cable."

Pat's debonair bearing had given place to dejection. With a pang Paul realized that Pat's attitude, ever since the moment he had warned him against the raw tomato, had been, however clumsily, protective. He would surely miss Pat's remonstrances and rebukes, his prudence and indulgence, his thoughtful attentions, his brotherly coun-