H.R. walked to his office, thinking of the engagement-ring. He therefore rang for Maximilian Onthemaker, Esquire.

"Come up at once!"

"Damnation, I will," said Max. "I'm busy as the dickens, but an order from you is—"

"Another front page—with pictures!"

"I'm half-way up, already!" said Max. Before the telephone receiver could descend on the holder, H.R. heard a voice impatiently shriek, "Down!" to an elevator-man two and one-half miles away.

When Mr. Onthemaker, his face alight with eagerness to serve the cause of the poor sandwich-men free gratis, for nothing, could speak, H.R. told him, calmly:

"Max, I am going to marry the only daughter of George G. Goodchild, president of the Ketcham National Bank. Get photographs of her. Try La Touche and the other fashionable photographers. They will require an order from Miss Goodchild."

"Written?" asked Mr. Onthemaker, anxiously.

"I don't know."

"I'll call up my office, and Miss Hirschbaum will give the order."

"Can she talk like—"

"Oh, she goes to the swell Gentile theaters," Max reassured him.

"Don't say I'm engaged, and tell 'em not to bother the parents." He meant the reporters.

Max thought of nothing else. "Leave it to me. Say, Hendrik—"

"Mr. Rutgers!" The voice and the look made Max tremble and grow pale.

"I was only joking," he apologized, weakly. He never repeated the offense. "I'll attend to it, Mr. Hendrik— I mean Mr. Rutgers."

"When Barrett comes in I'll send him down to you. Good day."

When Andrew Barrett returned he said, impetuously, "I'm afraid I'll have to have some help, H.R."

"I was going to tell you, my boy, that from to-morrow on you will have to go on salary."

Barrett's smiles vanished. He shook his head.

H.R. went on, in a kindly voice: "You've done very well and I'm much pleased with your work. But you mustn't be a hog."

Barrett had made bushels of money by taking advantage of the opportunity to do so. The victorious idea was another's, the machinery was the society's, the work was done by the sandwiches. But Mr. Andrew Barrett was the salesman, the transmuter into cash. He was entitled to all he desired to make so long as he didn't raise prices. Injustice stared him in the face with smiles! Reducing his gain and smiling! H.R. would as lief get another man! Barrett forgot that he could get no business until H.R.'s astounding Valiquet's coup made the agent's job one of merely writing down names. He forgot it, but he did not forget his own successor. All he could say, in a boyishly obstinate way, was, "Well, I think—"

"You mustn't think, and especially you must not think I'm an ass. You know very well that this is only the beginning of a very remarkable revolution in the advertising business. I need your services in installing the machinery and organizing the office, details that I leave to you because you have brains. Your salary will be a hundred a week and five per cent. on all new business. After I pass on to a still higher field I will make you a present of this business for you to have and to hold till death do you part. The Barrett Advertising Agency will be all yours. It will do a bigger business every year. And if you don't like it, you may leave this minute. You are young yet. Is it settled?"

Andrew Barrett nodded.

H.R. said, seriously: "It's about time sandwiching spread. How many on the Avenue to-day?"

"Nineteen firms; one hundred and eleven men. I think—"

H.R. knew what Barrett was about to say. He therefore said it for Barrett. "Now that you have Fifth Avenue, move west and east to Sixth and Madison and Fourth and try Broadway and Twenty-third and Thirty-fourth and Forty-second—"

"I was just going to propose it to you," said Barrett, aggrievedly.

"I know you have brains. That's why you are here. I trust you implicitly. This is a man's job. There will be big money in it for you. For me—" He ceased speaking, and stared meditatively out of the window.

Andrew Barrett wondered with all his soul what the chief was reading in big print in the future.

Andrew Barrett waited. Presently H.R. frowned. Then he smiled slightly.

Barrett stared fascinatedly. Ah, the lure of mystery! If more men appreciated it, polygamy would be inevitable—and liberal divorce laws.

H.R. looked up.

"Oh, are you here?" he smiled paternally, forgivingly.

Barrett beamed.

"My boy, I wish you'd run over to Max Onthemaker's or get him on the telephone. The newspapers are going to publish it."

"Yes, sir, I will. Er—what are they—what are you going to spring on an enraptured metropolis?

"My impending marriage to Grace Goodchild, only daughter of Goodchild, president of the Ketcham National Bank. See that it is well handled. And, Barrett?"

"Yes, sir?"

"The old people don't relish the idea. She is the most beautiful girl in New York."

"I've seen her! Pippinissima!" exclaimed Andrew Barrett, heartfully.

"Ten millions," said Hendrik Rutgers, calmly.

"My God!" whispered young Mr. Barrett, New-Yorker.

He meant what he said.

Ten millions!

Mr. Onthemaker, Andrew Barrett, and their faithful phalanx of star space men who always signed their stuff called in a body on La Touche, the photographer of the moment.

He refused to give them Miss Goodchild's photograph. He wished his name used, of course, but he was too sensible to disregard professional ethics.

"Mr. Rutgers said we could get it," said Andrew Barrett, sternly.

"I must have her permission. Hang it, boys, I am just as anxious as you—as I can be to do what I can for you. But I don't dare. These swell people are queer!" the photographer explained, aggrievedly.

"I'll call her up myself," said Max Onthemaker, resolutely. "What's the Goodchild number?"

He went to the telephone and gave the number of his own office in low tones. Presently he said, loudly enough to be heard by all, "Is this 777 Fifth Avenue?"

He alone heard the answer. He would not lie. He was a lawyer. It was unnecessary.

"Can I speak with Miss Goodchild? No; Miss Goodchild."

After a judiciously measured pause he spoke again: "Good afternoon. This is Mr. Onthemaker speaking. Quite well, thank you. I hope you are the same!... That's good!... Yes, miss, I saw him this morning. The papers wish to publish your photograph.... I'm sorry, but they say they simply must!... I am at La Touche's studio.... They doubtless do not do you justice, but they are the best ever taken of you—... No, I don't think they can wait for new ones.... One moment, please—"

He held his hand in front of the transmitter so she couldn't hear him say to La Touche:

"She wants some new ones."

"To-morrow at two," said La Touche.

"Give us the old ones now," chorused the reporters. "We'll publish the new ones for the wedding."

"I am sorry"—Max again spoke into the telephone—"but they say they want some now. They'll use the others later.... Which one?... The one Mr. Rutgers likes?... Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much."

Foreseeing unintelligent incredulity, Mr. Onthemaker did not hang up the receiver. It was just as well, for the cautious La Touche said, "I want to talk to her."

"Certainly," said Max, and hastily rose.

"Miss Goodchild," said the photographer, respectfully, "will it be all right if I let the reporters have—"

"Give him the one Mr. Rutgers likes," came in a sweet voice, without the slightest trace of Yiddish or catarrh. They would be wonderful linguists, if they didn't always begin by, "Say, listen."

"Which one is that?"

"The one he likes. And please send the bill to me, not to papa," with the accent properly on the last syllable.

"There will be no charge, Miss Goodchild. Thank you. I only wished to make sure you approved."

La Touche rose and, turning to the friendly reporters, asked, wrathfully, "How in blazes do I know which is the one Mr. Rutgers liked?"

"Let us pick it out," said one reporter. He wore his hair long.

"Any one will do," said another, considerately.

"I think I know which it is," said Barrett, taking pity on the photographer. To Mr. Onthemaker he whispered, "Max, you're a second H.R."

"I try to be," modestly said Sam.

And so the newspapers published the official preference of the lucky man. They published it because she was going to marry H.R.

That same morning Mr. Goodchild called up the city editors. He was so stupid that he was angry. He threatened criminal action and also denied the engagement. Rutgers was only a discharged clerk who had worked in his bank. He had been annoying his daughter, but he, Mr. Goodchild, would take steps to put an end to further persecution. Rutgers would not be allowed to call. He had, Mr. Goodchild admitted, called—uninvited. Had a man no privacy in New York? What was the matter with the police? What was he paying taxes for—to be annoyed by insane adventurers and damned reporters? He didn't want any impertinence. If they didn't print the denial of the engagement and the facts he would put the matter in his lawyer's hands.

The afternoon papers that day and the morning papers on the next printed another portrait of Miss Grace Goodchild because she was not engaged to H.R.

It was so exactly what a Wall Street millionaire father would do that everybody in New York instantly recognized a romance in high life!

Grace Goodchild never had known before how many people knew her and how many more wished to know her. The reporters camped on her front door-steps and the camera specialists could not be shooed away by Mr. Goodchild when he was going out on his way to the bank.

He assaulted a photographer. The papers therefore printed a picture of the infuriated money power in the act of using a club on a defenseless citizen. They did it very cleverly: by manipulating the plates they made Mr. Goodchild look four times the size of the poor photographer.

Max Onthemaker brought suit for fifty thousand dollars damages to the feelings, cranium, and camera of Jeremiah Legare, the Tribune's society snapper.

From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Grace held a continuous levee. Mrs. Goodchild was in handsomely gowned hysterics. Mr. Goodchild got drunk at his club.

Yes, he did. The house committee ignored it. When they saw the afternoon papers they condoned it. And yet all that the newspapers said was that Grace Goodchild and Hendrik Rutgers were not married.

And they blame the papers for inaccuracy.

H.R. knew that he must make his love for Grace plausible, and his determination to marry her persistent and picturesque.

His concern was with the public. He therefore called up Grace on the telephone. At the other end they wished to know who was speaking. He replied, "Tell Frederick to come to the telephone at once!"

Frederick responded.

"Are you there?" asked H.R., after the fashion of Frederick's compatriots. "Frederick, go instantly to Miss Grace and tell her to come to the telephone on a matter of life and death. It's Mr. Rutgers. Don't mention my name."

This wasn't one of Frederick's few duties when he deigned to accept employment in the Goodchild household. But H.R. expected to be obeyed. Therefore he was obeyed.

"Yes, sir; very good, sir," said Frederick, proud to act as Mercury. He rushed off.

"Telephone, Miss Grace. He said it was a matter of life and death."

"Who is it? Another reporter?"

"Oh no, ma'am. He's waiting, my lady."

Once in a while Frederick proved that he was worth his weight in gold by forgetting that he was in America. When he did, he always called Grace my lady.

She therefore went to the telephone. Of course H.R. was born lucky. But, as a matter of fact, by deliberately establishing Frederick on a plane of perennial inferiority he had made such a stroke of luck inevitable.

Since it was a matter of life and death, Grace instantly asked, "Who is it?"

"Listen, Grace. The entire country is going wild about you. Your portrait is being admired from Maine to California. But bear up with what's coming. We've got to bring father around to our way of thinking, and—"

"Who is it? Who is it?"

"Great Scott! Can't you recognize the voice? It's Hendrik."

Her exasperated nerves made her say, angrily, "I think you are—"

"Don't think I'm conceited, but I know it."

"I feel like telling you—"

"I'll say it for you. Close your ears till I'm done." After a pause: "I've insulted myself. I love you all the more for it! Grace, you must be brave! If you survive this next week—"

"My God!" she said, invoking divine aid for the first time since they moved to Fifth Avenue, thinking of what the newspapers could say.

"He's with us, sweetheart," Hendrik assured her. "Are you an Episcopalian?"

"Yes!" she replied before she could think of not answering.

"Good! I love you. Wait!"

His voice as he entreated her to wait rang with such anguish that she irrepressibly asked, "What?"

"I love you!"

He left the telephone and gathered together sixty-eight clippings, which he put in an envelope. He went to a fashionable florist, opened an account, and ordered some exquisite flowers. They were going to ask for financial references, but the flowers he ordered were so expensive that they felt ashamed of their own distrust. He stopped at Valiquet's, where they hated him so much that they respected him, bought a wonderful gold vanity-box, inside of which he sent a card. On the card he wrote:

More than ever!

H.R.

He sent clippings, flowers, and vanity-box to Miss Goodchild, 777 Fifth Avenue, by messenger. Charge account.

He sent for Fleming and told him he wished the Public Sentiment Corps to tackle their first job. H.R. had prepared a dozen letters of protest which the artists must copy before receiving their day's wages—one copy for each paper. The letters expressed the writers' admiration, contempt, approval, abhorrence, indignation, and commendation of the journalistic treatment of the Goodchild-Rutgers affair. Real names and real addresses were given. It beat Pro Bono Publico, Old Subscriber, and Decent Citizen all to pieces. H.R. supplied various kinds of stationery—some with crests, others very humble. The chirography was different. That alone was art.

The newspapers realized that H.R. had become news. The public wanted to read about him. The papers were the servants of the public. Circulation was invented for that very purpose.

Not content with the services of the Public Sentiment Corps, H.R. commanded Andrew Barrett to tip off the friendly reporters—Andrew by this time was calling them by their first name—to watch the Goodchild residence on Fifth Avenue and also the Ketcham National Bank on Nassau Street.

Thinking that this meant elopement up-town and shooting down-town, the reporters despatched the sob artists to Fifth Avenue and the veteran death-watch to the bank.

They were rewarded.

Parading up and down the Goodchild block on the Avenue were six sandwich-men. They carried the swellest sandwiches in Christendom. This was the first use of the famous iridescent glass mosaic sandwich in history. It was exquisitely beautiful. But the legends were even more beautiful:

This last he stationed in front of the Goodchild house.

Across the street, leaning against the Central Park wall, was Morris Lazarus, Mr. Onthemaker's able associate counsel. His pockets were bulging with numbered legal documents in anticipation of hostilities from Christians, policemen, and other aliens. He had told the reporters that he was one of Mr. Rutgers's counsel and did not propose to allow the sandwich-men to be interfered with by anybody. He also distributed his card, that the name might not be misspelled. He had not yet changed Morris into Maurice.

The sandwiches paraded up and down the Avenue sidewalk, never once going off the block. As two of the artists passed each other they saluted—the sandwich union's sign a rigid forefinger drawn quickly across the throat with a decapitating sweep: lambs expecting execution in the world's vast abattoir. The answering sign was a quick mouthward motion of the rigid thumb to represent the assuaging of thirst at the close of day. Thus did H.R. reward industry.

Before the sandwich-men had made the beat a dozen times all upper Fifth Avenue heard about it. A stream of limousines, preciously freighted, halted before the Goodchild mansion and poured out into the sidewalk friends and acquaintances of the Goodchilds. On the dowagers' faces you could see the smug self-congratulations that their daughters, thank goodness, did not have to be wooed thus vulgarly to get into the newspapers. And on the daughters the watching reporters saw smiles and envious gleams of bright eyes. Why couldn't they be thus desperately wooed in public? To let the world know you were desired, to have a man brave all the world in order to let the world know it! It was heroism! And even more: it was great fun!

The dowagers went in to express both surprise and condolence to Mrs. Goodchild. The girls rushed to Grace's boudoir to ask questions.

Mrs. Goodchild tried to brazen it out. Then she tried to treat it humorously. But the dowagers called both bluffs. Then she foolishly told them, "The poor young man is quite insane."

They chorused, "He must be!" with conviction—the conviction that she was lying like a suburban boomer. Of course she paid him for the work.

Grace was in an unphilosophical frame of mind. H.R. had made her the laughing-stock of New York. It would have been ridiculous if it were not so serious to her social plans. She hated him! Being absolutely helpless to help herself, her hatred embraced the world—the world that would laugh at her! All the world! Particularly the women. Especially those of her own age. They would laugh! This is the unforgivable sin in women because their sense of humor is minus. And when they laugh—

Just then the avalanche of those she hated the most swooped down upon her. Her eyes were red from acute aqueous mortification. They saw it. They said in chorus, sorrowfully, "You poor thing!"

Who said the rich had no hearts? The girls had given to her poverty without her asking for it. It always makes people charitable when they create poverty unasked.

"I wouldn't stand it!" cried one.

"Nor I!" chorused fourteen of Grace's best friends.

Outside, the Avenue, for the first time in its dazzling history, was blocked by automobiles. You would have sworn it was the shopping district in the Christmas week. The reason was that the occupants of the autos had told the chauffeurs to stop until they could read the sandwiches.

The reporters were ringing the front-door bell and the rapid-fire tintinnabulation was driving Frederick frantic. Mrs. Goodchild had told him not to send for the police. The reporters, feeling treated like rank outsiders, were in no pleasant frame of mind.

Up-stairs Grace, hiding her wrath, overwhelmed by the accursed sympathy of her best friends, said, helplessly, "What can I do?" She didn't like to tell them she wished to bury them with her own hands.

From fifteen youthful throats burst forth the same golden word—"Elope!"

She gasped and stared blankly.

"It's the greatest thing I ever heard. I don't know him, but if he is half-way presentable you can teach him table manners in a week. I'd make my father give him a job in the bank!" asserted Marion Beekman.

"Me, too!" declared Ethel Vandergilt.

"He's just splendid," volunteered a brunette, enthusiastically.

"And did you see the papers!" shrieked Verona Mortimer. "I say, did you see the papers? And the pictures! Girls, she's a regular devil, and we never knew it! Where did you hide your brains all these years, Gracie, dear?"

"I never would have thought it possible," said the cold, philosophical Katherine Van Schaick. "I call it mighty well engineered. Did you tell him to do it, Grace? If so you are a genius!"

"What does he look like?"

"Is he of the old New Jersey Rutgers?"

"If he's good-looking and has money, what's wrong with him? Booze?" asked a practical one.

"He isn't married, is he?" asked a doll-face with Reno in her heavenly eyes.

At this a hush fell on the group. It was the big moment.

"How exciting!" murmured one.

"Is he married, Grace?"

Fifteen pairs of eyes pasted themselves on Gracie's. She barely caught herself on the verge of confessing ignorance. She was dazed by the new aspect of her own love-affair.

These girls envied her!

"No!" she said, recklessly.

"It's her father," prompted a slim young Sherlock Holmes.

"No; Mrs. Goodchild!" corrected a greater genius.

"Maybe it's Grace herself," suggested the envious Milly Walton.

"How can I stop it?" asked Grace, angrily.

"What?" shrieked all.

"Why, girls," said Miss Van Schaick, "she isn't responsible for it, after all!"

Before the disappointment could spoil their pleasure one of them said, impatiently, "Oh, let's look at 'em!"

They rushed to the window.

"Let's go downstairs. We can see 'em better!" And Grace's friends thereupon rushed away. One of them was considerate enough to say, "Come on, Grace!" and Grace followed, not quite grasping the change in the situation. Her fears were not so keen; her doubts keener.

They nearly overturned their respective mammas in their rush to get to the windows.

"Grace," said Miss Van Schaick, who had never before called her anything but "Miss—er—Goodchild," "send out and tell them to stop and face this way. I don't think I read all the sandwiches."

"Yes! Yes!"

"Oh, do!"

"Please, Grace, tell 'em!" It sounded like election, when women shall vote. Much more melodious than to-day.

The dowagers were made speechless. They had acquired that habit before their daughters.

Grace capitulated to the incense.

"Frederick, go out and tell them to stop and face this way," commanded Grace, with a benignant smile.

"My de—" began Mrs. Goodchild, mildly.

"I have lived," said Miss Van Schaick in her high-bred, level voice that people admiringly called insulting, "to see a New York society man do something really original. I must ask Beekman Rutgers why his branch of the family did not inherit brains with the real estate."

Mrs. Goodchild gasped—and began to look resigned. From there to pride the jump would be slight. But hers was not a mind that readjusted itself very quickly.

"Oh, look!" and the girls began to read the legends aloud.

The dowagers rose, prompted by the same horrid fear. Chauffeurs were bad enough. But sandwich-men!

The world moves rapidly these days. One week ago these mothers did not know sandwich-men even existed. A new peril springs up every day.

They decided, being wise, not to scold their daughters.

The girls shook hands with Grace with such warmth that she felt as if each had left a hateful wedding-gift in her palm. Mrs. Goodchild went up-stairs weeping or very close to it. She could not see whither it all would lead, and she was the kind that must plan everything in advance to be comfortable. By always using a memorandum calendar she cleverly managed to have something to look forward to in this life.

Grace remained. She was thinking. When she thought she always tapped on the floor with her right foot, rhythmically. She realized that H.R.'s courtship of her had changed in aspect. She knew that girls in her set thought everything was a lark. But they themselves did not visit those who had larked beyond a certain point. An ecstatic "What fun!" soon changed to a frigid "How perfectly silly!" It was not so difficult to treat the sandwich episode humorously now, or even to take intelligent advantage of the publicity. She knew that, with the negligible exception of a few old fogies, the crass vulgarity of H.R.'s public performances would not harm her unless her father took it seriously enough to appeal to the law about it, when the same old fogies would say she should have ignored it. But she could not clearly see the end of it—that is, an ending that would redound to her glory. This man was a puzzle, a paradox, an exasperation. He was too unusual, too adventurous, too clever, too dangerous; he had too much to gain and nothing to lose. How should she treat him? He did not classify easily. He was masterful. He loved her. Masterful men in love have a habit of making themselves disagreeable.

In how many ways would this masterful man, who was resourceful, original, undeterred by conventions, indifferent to the niceties of life, unafraid of public opinion as of social ostracism, make himself disagreeable? Was he serious in his determination to marry her? Or was it merely a scheme to obtain notoriety? Was he a crank or a criminal? She couldn't marry him. What would he do? What wouldn't he do? How long would he keep it up? Must she flee to Europe?

Her foot was tap-tapping away furiously. She ceased to think in order to hate him! Then because she hated him she feared him. Then because she feared him she respected him. Then because she respected him she didn't hate him. Then because she didn't hate she began to think of him. But all she knew about him was that he said he loved her and everybody in New York knew it! Who was he? What was he? Should she start an inquiry? And yet—

"I beg pardon, miss. But the men—" Frederick paused.

"Yes?"

"They are standing." He meant the sandwiches.

"Well?"

"They are," he reminded her, desperately but proudly, "Mr. Rutgers's men."

"Tell them to go away," she said.

He stared a moment, for as the consort of the owner of the men she had feudal obligations to fulfil. He remembered that this was America.

"Very good, miss," he said.

She went up-stairs. She wished to think. It would probably make her head ache. She therefore told her maid to wake her at six and, taking up one of Edwin Lefevre's books, she went to sleep.