The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 159: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

REINDEER ON THE ROOF, “The man witha’ scheme to. make a profit of forty per cent is more inter- esting after he begins to make it,” re- marked Colonel Crofton. “I confess I am more interested at the moment in the ' results of the yacht races at Narragansett next summer; I am building a yacht.” Thus the interview ended, the men parting as pleasantly as they had met, each convinced of the superiority of his judgment. Spencer was hardly well out of the of- fice when Mr. Howard Olmstead was an- nounced and ushered in. “How are you, Howard?” said the colonel, and they greeted each other with the cool informality of men who belong to the same clubs and are bored by the same things. “ Flora’s been running me around town in her car, and she dropped me here,” Olmstead announced. . “ Glad you’re on good terms with her,” said Crofton. “ Fairly good terms, I should say,” continued Olmstead; ‘“ but that’s really what I came in to talk to you about.”’ “T’m not surprised,” and Crofton yawned. ‘ Flora has reached an age at which she is no longer merely the delight of my leisure hours. She is supplanting business, avocations, everything!”’ “Tm quite ready to take her off your hands!” Olmstead declared. “Oh, the market for the commodity is lively enough,” chuckled the colonel, “but the terms of transfer are deucedly involved. You know, of course, How- ard, that I have no objection to signing over all my rights to you, but these twenty-year-old flappers have a way, nowadays, of standing out for their own preferences. It makes the father busi- ness no sinecure. She’s as changeable as the weather, you know, but just now she’s reported to favor young Spencer.” “ He’s a bore, and he has nothing—ab- solutely nothing!” declared the younger man, and dismissed the matter with a wave of the hand. “A father can’t claim to know much 149 about his own daughter,” said Crofton uneasily, ‘“‘ but my fear is that she has too much sentiment. I’m afraid she’ll get heroic and marry the noble young man, to show how little she cares for money! ~ Then she’ll suffer for it, unless I relent and come across.” “You mean that you have refused to finance such a marriage?” Olmstead in- quired, with some interest. “Absolutely!” declared the colonel. “If she takes Spencer, a husband is all she'll get.”’ | ‘I must say, that rather pleases, me,” Olmstead remarked. “ It’s a capital idea. It simplifies things. Flora is a fine girl, splendid girl, an’ all that—but my dear’ Crofton, she’d never get on without motor-cars and yachts and such. She likes all the things that cost money; she couldn’t be happy without ’em.” ‘““Mm—I wish she could be convinced of that before it’s too late,’ murmured Crofton. “ You’d better let her understand your attitude toward Spencer,” Olmstead ad- vised. “ And then, I think you ought to push the social business a little harder. If you went about more with Flora and gave more entertainments at your house, she wouldn’t have so much time to get romantic about fellows like Spencer. I. don’t want to seem to be asking you to do all this for me, but if you got Flora into a whirl of excitement, you’d carry her off her feet, you know. — ‘Christmas is coming, and you might play that up. Have a Christmas party at the house and give Flora some really big things. Give her a necklace, or tiara, or something like that, with a few other gewgaws, and she’ll begin to see what a poor figure Spencer would cut as the husband of such a girl. Incidentally you could suggest that our engagement should be announced at the Christmas party.” “ Fixing me up for a regular Santa Claus!” Crofton sneered good-naturedly. “T fancy Flora would laugh. I don’t take much thought of Christmas and things like that, you know. I usually COMMICOOOKS EO