George Allan England

“ Talbot shook a mournful head.
“Your advice is no good, Bob. I don’t want a business woman for my wife, at all.”
“Well, then,” judged Boardman, “knife her company. That’s the only thing left to do. She’ll have to admit defeat, and then she’ll be yours. In a year she’ll have forgotten there was ever such a thing in the world as a can-opener. She wont even have one in your happy kitchenette. Nothing but canned-goods with keys to ’em. Can Carbury Can-cutters, Incorporated. That’s the key to all your heartaches. ”

“ Well?”
“Spill it!” commanded Talbot.
BOARDMAN smoked contemplatively. “Did you ever hear of such a thing as a natural, born, invincible hoodoo?”
“No—not seriously, that is. Of course, there’s a lot of jokes about hoodoos, but—”
“I don’t mean any joke-stuff at all. I mean the real, simon-impure article. I mean a hoodoo that crabs everything from cradle to grave. A hoodoo marked with the Black Spot of the Cosmic Swat. Ever know a man like that?”
“No,” replied Talbot. “It’s all foolishness.”
“Not at all. Luck’s a solid fact. Some people turn everything they touch into cash. ”

“ After Carbury Can-Cutters, Incorporated, is on a paying basis and I’ve got an independent income of my own, well,”—and she laughed shortly,—“maybe I’ll offer you a partnership. Not till then. Now, let’s talk about the weather.”
“THE whole situation is manifestly absurd,” Talbot complained to Robert Boardman, second, that night at the Circulatory Club. “Geneva’s absurd too.”
“Any man thinks any woman’s absurd when she wont have him,” Boardman affirmed. He slumped down angularly in the deep leather chair by the fireplace. “That’s part of man’s natural egotism. ”

“ For twenty years he hasn’t earned a cent, and he’s kept the family in hot water all that time.”
“Hot water is a luxury, these days.”
“This was boiling. I broke away and into college, did all kinds of work and made the grade. Graduated with an M. A. degree, a Phi Beta Kappa key, a debt of four hundred dollars and nervous prostration from doing my own work and other fellows’ too—tutoring ’em, to help pay expenses. Just about that time my uncle, the only rich one in the family, had a tannery and a big general store. He got his hand chopped off in the tannery and lost his store in a panic. ”

“ Others would queer the City of Gold if they owned a single lot in Angel Avenue. Every broker knows it. They’re marked men. Nobody will have ’em in their business. Most brokers wont even trade with ’em. ”