"You're too good to be true, without that."
"Wouldn't you naturally suppose," sighed Wyatt, "that people would
know that no man could be as big a fool as I am, unless he did it on
purpose? But they don't. They swallow it, hook, bob and sinker!"
Chapter VI
"_If the bowl had been stronger
My tale had been longer_."
Steve entered Mitchell's office with the painful uprightness and
precise carriage of one who has lunched not wisely but rather too
well. His speech, too, was of ponderous brevity. The man of affairs
chided him with fatherly kindness.
"This won't do, my boy--this won't do. I like you, Thompson. I'm
sorry--I'm pained to see this. Don't go in for this sort of thing, or
your good fortune will prove a curse in disguise."
Steve hung his head, muttering something incoherent about not being
used to wine and that he'd soon get over it.
"Oh, young men _will_ be young men, I suppose," sighed Mitchell
tolerantly. "Tell you what. Archibald's going for a spin over to
East New York. I'll just 'phone him to drop by on his way and take us
along. Fresh air'll do you good."
Steve assented, and fell to poring over the immense wall map of New
York with preternatural gravity.
But Mitchell's benevolent plan was doomed to be frustrated. Hardly had
Archibald arrived and the employees been dismissed, when the sordid,
busy, money-making city intruded in the person of Loring.
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