a
chair and looking over the back of it at March. "I saw he was on his car
about something, and I thought I'd better not monkey with him much. I
supposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow."
Fulkerson broke into a laugh.

March remained serious. "Mr. Dryfoos," he said, willing to let the simple
statement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, "came in
here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on the
magazine--to turn him off, as he put it."

"Did he?" asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. "The old man is
business, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody else to
do Lindau's work for you. This town is just running over with
half-starved linguists. What did you say?"

"What did I say?" March echoed. "Look here, Fulkerson; you may regard
this as a joke, but I don't. I'm not used to being spoken to as if I were
the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and cultivated
man like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if that's your
idea of me--"

"Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn't mind the old man's way. He don't mean
anything by it--he don't know any better, if you come to that."

"Then I know better," said March. "I refused to receive any instructions
from Mr. Dryfoos, whom I don't know in my relations with 'Every Other
Week,' and I referred him to you."

"You did?" Fulkerson whistled. "He owns the thing!"

"I don't care who owns the thing," said March. "My negotiations were with
you alone from the beginning, and I leave this matter with you. What do
you wish done about Lindau?"

"Oh, better let the old fool drop," said Fulkerson. "He'll light on his
feet somehow, and it will save a lot of rumpus."

"And if I decline to let him drop?"

"Oh, come, now, March; don't do that," Fulkerson began.

"If I decline to let him drop," March repeated, "what will you do?"

"I'll be dogged if I know what I'll do," said Fulkerson. "I hope you
won't take that stand. If the old man went so far as to speak to you
about it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock under first as
last."

"And do you mean to say that you would not stand by me in what I
considered my duty-in a matter of principle?"

"Why, of course, March," said Fulkerson, coaxingly, "I mean to do the
right thing. But Dryfoos owns the magazine--"

"He doesn't own me," said March, rising. "He has made the little mistake
of speaking to me as if he did; and