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Brooks Brothers, worked at journalism, and seldom went out of New York if he could help it, was quite absurd.

Jock had never met a man he liked so well on sight, and as the four of them (Bill Olmstead had arrived, breathless and propitiatory, on the heels of Johnny) sat drinking tea around a table a little later, the liking grew into something deep and strong and destined to last. And mutual. Every so often the wash of the world eddies together two souls so essentially congenial that they admire each other at once, love each other thereafter, and entertain each other to the point where everything said by one, however slight, excites the risibilities of the other. Jock and Johnny were thus. Either of them had only to say "Pass the salt," and the other howled and clapped him on the back.

So they had a hilarious tea party, taking it all in all, and Jock enjoyed himself hugely. At the same time he was conscious of tiny pangs of envy. Peg and Johnny were so happy! Even though they joked about their marriage, teased one another, you could not miss the contented undertone, and it gave you a feeling of standing shivery-cold and looking through a window at firelight. Jock tried hard to shrug away this feeling. "In just a couple of months now—" he kept telling himself, and he wondered why he was not comforted.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Peg, who adored to arrange. "We'll lap up this tea and stuff, and then we'll all go 'round to our place and call up some people and have a bender, Tomorrow's Johnny's and my anniversary—six weeks married and no—bureaus heaved by either party—and something ought to be done about it. Jock, you get your Yvonne—I've been dying to clap eyes on that woman ever since the day