Phil himself scarcely knew what would open, and what remain sealed to him, when touched by the wand of his increasing influence in the world of business; daily he plummeted new potentialities of personal favor from his control of purchases of four hundred and forty-five thousand dollars to be bestowed at his desire.
"Certainly I know him, personal," boasted Phil. "I was taking him out to lunch with me. He is a golfer, too. But he had to go off and get married. I give his papa a business of four hundred and forty-five thousand in one year. We are very good friends."
"She looks very swell," repeated Emma, enviously.
"Papa," reproved Rosita, "mamma should not say swell."
Papa was persuading himself into a fancy too pleasant to permit expeditions into cavil. Fled from Phil's sensitiveness was all offense against Jay for having ignored the luncheon invitation. The boy had been running off to get married; Phil excused any one, under such conditions. He imagined that at the time of his talk with Jay, the boy had had Tryston definitely in mind as his destination for his honeymoon.
This endowed his recommendation of the place, to Phil, with an exceedingly flattering significance. Jay Rountree had, practically, invited Phil Metten and family to visit Tryston after Christmas when he, himself, would be there. The matter magnified itself most agreeably.
"Do you remember, mamma, the other day," asked Phil, "I say to you, 'Maybe after Christmas we go South?' I tell you why I said it. That day I was talking to this boy; and he says to me, 'Mr. Metten, I tell you where to
