“Continue to think so,” P. Sybarite advised briefly.

“Your people had money, didn’t they, oncet?”

“I’ve been told so, but if true, it only goes to prove there’s nothing in the theory of heredity....”

“I gotcha,” announced Bross, upon prolonged and painful analysis.

“How?” asked P. Sybarite, who had fallen to thinking of other matters.

“I mean, I just dropped to your high-sign to mind my own business.  All right, P.S.  Far be it from me to wanta pry into your Past.  Besides, I ’m scared to—­never can tell what I’ll turn up—­like, f’rinstance, Per—­”

“Steady!”

“Like that they usta call you when you was innocent, I mean.”

To this P. Sybarite made no response; and George subsided into morose reflections.  It irked him sore to remember he had been worsted by the meek little slip of a bookkeeper trotting so quietly at his elbow.

He was a man of his word, was George Bross; not for anything would he have gone back on his promise to keep secret that afternoon’s titillating discovery; likewise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the promised treat; withal he was human (after his kind) and since reprisals were not barred by their understanding, he began then and there to ponder the same.  One way or another, that day’s humiliation must be balanced; else he might never again hold up his head in the company of gentlemen of spirit.

But how to compass this desire, frankly puzzled him.  It were cowardly to contemplate knockin’ the block off’n P. Sybarite; the disparity of their statures forebade; moreover, George entertained a vexatious suspicion that P. Sybarite’s explanation on his recent downfall had not been altogether disingenuous; he didn’t quite believe it had been due solely to his own clumsiness and an adventitious foot.

“That sort of thing don’t never happen,” George assured himself privately.  “I was outclassed, all right, all right.  What I wanna know is:  where’d he couple up with the ring-wisdom?”

Repeated if covert glances at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite’s face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation of the evening’s promised amusement.

Suddenly it was borne in upon the shipping clerk that in the probable arrangement of the proposed party he would be expected to dance attendance upon Miss Violet Prim, leaving P. Sybarite free to devote himself to Miss Lessing.  Whereupon George scowled darkly.

“P.S.’s got his nerve with him,” he protested privately, “to cop out the one pippin in the house all for his lonely.  It’s a wonder he wouldn’t slip her a chanct to enjoy herself with summon’ her own age....

“Not,” he admitted ruefully, “that I’d find it healthy to pull any rough stuff with Vi lookin’ on.  I don’t even like to think of myself lampin’ any other skirt while Violet’s got her wicks trimmed and burnin’ bright.”