Now"-- he pushed a button on his desk--"let's see if there are any others here who feel as I do." It was early evening when Gus Briskow returned to his wife's and his daughter's rooms at the Ajax.

He slipped in quietly and sank into a chair.
"Mercy me! I thought you was run over," Ma Briskow exclaimed.
"I feel like I was," the nester declared, with a grin.

"Say! Mister Gray sold the Evans lease an'-- we got more money than ever." "Then mebbe you can afford a new suit," Allie told him.

"You look like sin." Her father nodded, but his mind was full of the incidents of that afternoon and he began at once to recount them.

He told the story badly, but in a language that the women understood.