But the memory of his card losses frightened him, and he stopped on the way to see what money Austin would advance him.
Julius Neergard came up from Long Island, arriving at the office about noon.

The weather was evidently cold on Long Island; he had the complexion of a raw ham, but the thick, fat hand, with its bitten nails, which he offered Selwyn as he entered his office, was unpleasantly hot, and, on the thin nose which split the broad expanse of face, a bead or two of sweat usually glistened, winter and summer.
"Where's Gerald ?" he asked as an office-boy relieved him of his heavy box coat and brought his mail to him.
"I advised Gerald to go home," observed Selwyn carelessly; "he is not perfectly well." Neergard's tiny mouse-like eyes, set close together, stole brightly in Selwyn's direction; but they usually looked just a little past a man, seldom at him.
"Grippe ?" he asked.
"I don't think so," said Selwyn.
"Lots of grippe 'round town," observed Neergard, as though satisfied that Gerald had it.

Then he sat down and rubbed his large, membranous ears.
"Captain Selwyn," he began, "I'm satisfied that it's a devilish good thing." "Are you ?" "Emphatically.

I've mastered the details--virtually all of 'em.

Here's the situation in a grain of wheat!--the Siowitha Club owns a thousand or so acres of oak scrub, pine scrub, sand and weeds, and controls four thousand more; that is to say--the club pays the farmers' rents and fixes their fences and awards them odd jobs and prizes for the farm sustaining the biggest number of bevies.