THE GREAT BUBBLE SYNDICATE


I suppose it was a fool arrangement, but anyway we did it; and
Harry Prentiss, who is learning how to be a corporation lawyer
and has specialized on contracts, spent a whole week making it
what he called iron-clad. When it was typewritten it covered
nine pages, and was so excessively iron-clad that nobody could
understand it but Harry. He said it undoubtedly covered the
ground, however, and would be worth all the trouble it cost him
in the friction it would save afterward. You'd hardly know Harry
as the same boy that played Yale full-back, he's grown so cynical
and suspicious, and he's got that lawyer way of looking at you
now, as though you were a liar and he was just about to pounce on
you with the truth. I thought he might have brought Nelly and
himself into the agreement under one head, considering he was
engaged to her and they were only waiting to save a thousand
dollars in order to get married; but he couldn't see it in that
way at all, and spoke about people changing their minds, and how
in law you must be prepared for everything (especially if it were
disagreeable and unexpected) and put supposistious cases till
Nelly broke down and cried.

They had got five hundred toward the thousand when they were both
taken with automobile fever--and taken bad; and then they decided
that, though marriage was all right, they were still young, and
the bubble had the first call. Harry had been secretly taking