They would trade with her--items for letters.
It helped all concerned that not only Parkhurst, but the rest of the kind-hearted space-grabbers, informed the world that the possessor of the income of six hundred thousand a year was a fount of erudition, and withal a man of the world, with exquisite manners--invulnerable to the optical artillery of the fairest sirens on earth. And always the six hundred thousand dollars a year to spend, so that the beastly stuff would not accumulate and choke up the passages of the palace he proposed to build! That was how Francis Wolfe came to be introduced to Mr. Jerningham by J. Willoughby Parkhurst, and how the position was delicately offered to him, and how F. Wolfe delicately accepted.
A fine-looking, well-built young fellow, this Frank--dark-eyed, black-haired, with a wonderfully clean pink but virile complexion that made him physically very attractive. In those Broadway restaurants that have become institutions Francis Wolfe was himself an institution. His debts were discussed as freely as the cost of gasoline. And yet the chorus contingent and their lady friends, consisting of the most beautiful women in all the world, not only preferred, but publicly and on the slightest provocation proclaimed their preference for, Frank Wolfe penniless to almost any one else--short of millions. But if Frank Wolfe was the chorus-girls' pet, Mr. Francis Wolfe was the only brother of Mrs. John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham, and favorite nephew of old Mrs. Stimson. And everybody knew what that meant!
J. Willoughby Parkhurst left them alone, even if he was a reporter.
"If you do not mind talking business," said Jerningham, with a deprecatory smile.
"Not at all," eagerly said young Wolfe, who was consumed by curiosity to listen to the golden statistics. "In fact," he added, with a burst of boyish candor, "I'd be glad to have you."
"You are a nice boy!" said Jemingham, so gratefully and non-familiarly that Frank could not find fault with him.
"I need a friend," continued Jerningham. "I know friendship cannot be bought. It grows--but there must be a seed. It may be that after you know me better you will give me your friendship. That is for the future. I also need a man! A man whom I can trust! A man, young Mr. Francis Wolfe," he said, with a sternness that impressed young Mr. Francis Wolfe, "who will not laugh at me!"