He walked about the roof garden aimlessly. That was his chief defect, this uncertainty of aim. He was, for example, never to know he had convinced the firm that his paper was the right medium in the matter of the full-page contract for a year. He had gone out at the moment of victory, thinking he was defeated.
Bob, the seventeen-year-old son, with the mechanical turn of mind, came in. Unwin turned to greet him with a cheerful smile. He anticipated the unasked question.
"I didn’t get it," he said; "money was tight. I went in at a bad time. Next month, perhaps. I'm sorry, Bob."
The boy was taller than his father. In a sense he was a more resolute and reliable man. He put his arms about the elder with a protective gesture. "I know you did your best," he said simply."
And all through the dinner poor Unwin was haunted by the certainty that he had not done his best
Real Friends
"Never mind," he said, with a suddenness that almost startled the boy and girl, "Never mind. That contract was not all I had up my sleeve." He snapped his fingers with a gesture which implied that the contract was unworthy of another thought. "Friendship counts for something. In dark moments one thinks of friends."
He ceased suddenly and would say no more. When he had taken a tray to his wife, Bob looked at his sister.
"What do you suppose he meant by that?"
"I can’t guess. Something is buzzing around and around in his dear old head. By to-morrow he will have forgotten."
She was tired. She leaned on her elbows. The thought of the Radway office and its dread efficiency overcame her. She had other than the business instincts and ambitions
"Oh, Bob," she sighed, "if I could only go to Smith."
"They say the M. I. T. is the best in the world," he said.
CHAPTER II
A Financier At Home
WHEN the hour for dinner drew near Gibbons was inclined to blame the pale secretary that men like Bettington and Unwin, with whom he had now no common ground of intercourse, should be his guests.
Mrs. Gibbons had been frankly amazed. Resolutely she had cut adrift from all her old friends. In the pursuit of social success the new friends are the ones who count.
She had a few minutes' talk with her husband before she went to a dinner party of prominent women who were about to found a really exclusive club.
"I've never even heard you mention their names."
“Td forgotten them,” he said. "The word 'Tubby' brought it all back. Unwin was 'Tubby' and Bettington was 'Betty.' We were thick as thieves once."
"And you?" she asked. "What did they call you, by way of a nickname?"
"I've forgotten," he lied.
Outside, Floyd Unwin was waiting for Howard Bettington. He needed moral support. He was come, so he told himself, upon a task that hardly promised success. He cursed himself for his perpetual enthusiasms.
It had looked so simple, so probable, so assured. He had been losing courage ever since he had donned his evening dress. The refusal of his well preserved but ancient clothes to adapt themselves to new and ampler measurements had brought anxious moments.
Would the cloth hold? Might not buttons fly off in resentment and leave him naked to an unkind world? And he had punctuated these efforts to ar-
