brows. He can't come down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from the shoulder, like you or I can."
"That's right, he's like all these highbrows."
"That's so, like all of 'em."
"That's a fact."
They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.
The conductor came in. He had once called at Babbitt's office, to ask about houses. "H' are you, Mr. Babbitt! We going to have you with us to Chicago? This your boy?"
"Yes, this is my son Ted."
"Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this great big fellow!"
"Forty? Why, brother, I'll never see forty-five again!"
"Is that a fact! Wouldn't hardly 'a' thought it!"
"Yes, sir, it's a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel with a young whale like Ted here!"
"You're right, it is." To Ted: "I suppose you're in college now?"
Proudly, "No, not till next fall. I'm just kind of giving the diff'rent colleges the once-over now."
As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling against his blue chest, Babbitt and Ted gravely considered colleges. They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning, rejoicing, "Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast, heh?" They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Babbitt ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Ted, an extra piece of mince pie.
