He would eat for a minute or two--then get up and look at his
carefully dressed self in the full-length mirror--then gaze from his
high, exclusive window down into Park Avenue with its stream of cars
comfortably carrying their occupants toward ten o'clock jobs in Wall
or Broad Streets--and then he would return to his breakfast. This was
amazing--bewildering!
He was toward the end of his omelette when a knock sounded at his
door. Thinking Judkins had returned, he called, "Come in"; but instead
of Judkins the opening door admitted the belligerent young man in
rumpled evening clothes of the previous night. Now he wore a silk
dressing-gown of a flamboyant peacock blue, his feet showed bare in
toe slippers, his wavy, yellowish hair had the tousled effect of a
very recent separation from a pillow. A cigarette depended from the
corner of his mouth.
Larry started to rise. But the young man arrested the motion with a
gesture of mock imperativeness.
"Keep your seat, fair sir; I would fain have speech with thee." He
crossed and sat on a corner of Larry's table, one slippered foot
dangling, and looked Larry over with an appraising eye. "Permit me to
remark, sir," he continued in his grand manner, "that you look as
though you might be some one."
"Is that what you wanted to tell me, Mr.
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