Spring Fever

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Spring had come to New York, the eight-fifteen train from Great Neck had come to the Pennsylvania terminus, and G. Ellery Cobbold, that stout economic royalist, had come to his downtown office, all set to prise another wad of currency out of the common people.

It was a lovely morning, breathing of bock beer and the birth of a new baseball season, and the sap was running strongly in Mr. Cobbold's veins. He looked like a cartoon of Capital in a labor paper, but he felt fine. It would not have taken much to make him break into a buck-and-wing dance, and if he had had roses in his possession it is more than probable that he would have strewn them from his hat.

Borne aloft in the elevator, he counted his blessings one by one and found them totting up to a highly satisfactory total. The boil on the back of his neck had yielded to treatment. His golf handicap was down to twenty-four. His son Stanwood was in London, safely removed from the wiles of Miss Eileen Stoker of Beverly Hills, Cal. He was on the point of concluding remunerative deals with the Messrs. Simms and Weinstein of Detroit and the Consolidated Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa. And a fortunate glance at Debrett's Peerage that morning had reminded him that tomorrow was Lord Shortlands' birthday.

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