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By Root 9017 0

in the financial section of the Evening Post last night tipping off about a boom in airplane stocks?""No . . . but I had a talk with Nat Benton, you know he's a broker I told you about, a friend of Ol ie Taylor's. . . . Wel , he said . . ." Grace got to her feet. "Now you know if you boys talk shop on Sundays I leave the room." Joe took his wife's arm and gently pul ed her back into her chair. "Just let me say one thing and then we'l shut up. . . . I hope we keep out of the hands of the operators for at least five years. I'm sorry the damned stuff's listed. I wish I trusted Mer-ritt and them as much as I do you and me.""We'l talk about that," said Charley. Joe handed him a cigar. "Al right, Gracie," he said. "How about a selection on the vic-trola?" Charley had been planning al winter to take Doris with him to Washington when he flew down one of the sample planes to show off some of his patents to the experts at the War Department, but she and her mother sailed for Eu-rope the week before. That left him with nothing to do one springy Saturday night, so he cal ed up the Johnsons. He'd met Paul on the subway during the winter and Paul had asked him in a hurt way why he never came down any more. Charley had answered honestly he hadn't stuck his nose out of the plant in months. Now it made him feel funny cal ing up, listening to the phone ring and then Eveline's teasing voice that always seemed to have a little jeer in it: What fun, he must come down at once and stay to supper, she had a lot of funny people there, she said. Paul opened the door for him. Paul's face had a tal owy look Charley hadn't noticed before. "Welcome, stranger," he said in a forced boisterous tone and gave him a couple

-207-of pats on the back as he went into the crowded room. There were some very pretty girls, and young men of dif-ferent shapes and sizes, cocktailglasses, trays of little things to eat on crackers, cigarettesmoke. Everybody was talking and screeching like a lot of lathes in a turningplant. At the back of the room Eveline, looking tal and pale and beautiful, sat on a marbletopped table beside a smal man with a long yel ow nose and pouches under his eyes. "Oh, Char-ley, how prosperous you look. . . . Meet Charles Edward Holden . . . Holdy, this is Charley Anderson; he's in flyingmachines. . . . Why, Charley, you look filthy rich."

"Not yet," said Charley. He was trying to keep from laughing. "Wel , what are you looking so pleased about?

Everybody is just too dreary about everything this after-noon."

"I'm not dreary," said Holden. "Now don't tel me I'm dreary."

"Of course, Holdy, you're never dreary but your re-marks tend towards murder and suicide." Everybody laughed a great deal. Charley found him-self pushed away from Eveline by people trying to listen to what Charles Edward Holden was saying. He found himself talking to a plain young woman in a shiny grey hat that had a big buckle set in it like a headlight. "Do tel me what you do," she said. "How do you mean?"

"Oh, I mean almost everybody here does something, writes or paints or something.""Me? No, I don't do any-thing like that . . . I'm in airplane motors.""A flyer, oh, my, how thril ing. . . . I always love to come to Eve-line's, you never can tel who you'l meet. . . . Why, last time I was here Houdini had just left. She's wonder-ful on celebrities. But I think it's hard on Paul, don't you? . . . Paul's such a sweet boy. She and Mr. Holden

. . . it's al so public. He writes about her al the time in his column. . . . Of course I'm very oldfashioned. Most people don't seem to think anything of it. . . . Of course

-208-it's grand to be honest. . . . Of course he's such a celeb-rity too. . . . I certainly think people ought to be honest about their sexlife, don't you? It avoids al those dreadful complexes and things. . . . But it's too bad about Paul, such a nice cleancut young fel ow.

. . ."

When the guests had thinned out a little a Frenchspeak-ing colored maid served a dinner of curry and rice with lots of little fixings. Mr. Holden and Eveline did al the talk-ing. It was