‘Sure. He’s the kind that needs freedom.’

‘How much would I have to put up for him, if he went in partnership with you?’

‘I figured it would be five thousand dollars.’

‘Can’t do it possibly. I’ll tell you. I’ll put up two thousand now. Three months from now, if you two are making a real, honest-to-God beginning, I may put in another two.’

‘It’s a go!’

So was Howard kicked upstairs; so was the Triumph Agency saved from becoming a glee club; and in the innocent belief that his own overwhelming charm had done it all, Howard began his career as a builder of cities, a king of contracts, a viceroy of choice rentals.

Annabel was hanging the curtains in the bright new three-room office of the bright new firm of Bogey & Cornplow, Realtors. Ben had chosen the city’s northern outskirts, a pouncing place for the best suburbs, and for their office chosen the ground floor of a cheerful-looking building filled with doctors and dentists. Already he was out hustling for prospects, while Howard conducted the office, a task which, so far, had consisted in watching Annabel fill flower vases and the girl stenographer type ‘The quick brown fox jumped with zest over the gay lady’. He lighted a thin cigar with an air he had never shown in lighter college days, and to Annabel he pontificated:

‘This is something like it! Course at the Triumph the trouble was, I was kept back by being the owner’s son. Everybody took advantage of it and tried to borrow money . . .’

‘Howard! Please! Howard!’

He threw down the cigar; he became serious.

‘I know what you’re going to say, dear, every word; and most of its true. I was loafing. And I did kinda borrow a little. But what was there ahead, stuck in that dirty shop? Now I’m free! I’ve got the world by the tail! I’m going to work twenty hours a day, every day, by golly — uh — just soon as there’s any customers to work on!’

The Cornplow family had always taken its vacations together, in August or September, at some lakeside hotel. This year, with Howard’s marriage, with Sara’s revolution, with Coheeze creditors still to be pacified, with the Duplex booming, their vacation plans had been unmade.

Fred sat with Hazel on the screened porch at the side of their house on a late July evening, very hot, conducive to bad tempers and rebellion. It seemed to him that he had been fighting a battle in the fog, with shadows that proved to be armed enemies, and enemies that were mist; and that he could depend only on the fixed cool light that was Hazel.

‘Say, uh, Hazel, don’t you think we better start thinking about what we’re going to do for vacation? Looks like with the boy married, and Sara so doggone busy at the tennis club explaining she never was a communist, just you and I’ll go off together. First time in all these years, and will I enjoy it! Let’s drive up to the Gaspé. Or how about putting the car on a lake steamer and going out to Duluth? We’ll have some adventures, too — no Sara along to highhat the populace! Just us two old bums!’