"Where you been keepin' yourself?"

"Oh, just stickin' round. What's up, Georgie?"

"How 'bout lil lunch 's noon?"

"Be all right with me, I guess. Club?'

"Yuh. Meet you there twelve-thirty."

"A' right. Twelve-thirty. S' long, Georgie."


IV

His morning was not sharply marked into divisions. Interwoven with
correspondence and advertisement-writing were a thousand nervous
details: calls from clerks who were incessantly and hopefully seeking
five furnished rooms and bath at sixty dollars a month; advice to Mat
Penniman on getting money out of tenants who had no money.

Babbitt's virtues as a real-estate broker--as the servant of society in
the department of finding homes for families and shops for distributors
of food--were steadiness and diligence. He was conventionally honest, he
kept his records of buyers and sellers complete, he had experience with
leases and titles and an excellent memory for prices. His shoulders were
broad enough, his voice deep enough, his relish of hearty humor strong
enough, to establish him as one of the ruling caste of Good Fellows. Yet
his eventual importance to mankind was perhaps lessened by his large and
complacent ignorance of all architecture save the types of houses turned