t know him. Fat Ed
Meyers could be courtmartialed, tried, convicted, and publicly
disgraced, with his epaulets torn off, and his sword broken, and
likely as not he'd stoop down, pick up a splinter of steel to use
as a toothpick, and Castlewalk down the aisle to the tune with
which they were drumming him out of the regiment. Stay right
here. Meyers's explanation ought to be at least amusing, if not
educating."

In the corridor outside could be heard some one blithely humming
in the throaty tenor of the fat man. The humming ceased with a
last high note as the door opened and there entered Fat Ed Meyers,
rosy, cherubic, smiling, his huge frame looming mountainous in the
rippling folds of a loose-hung London plaid topcoat.

"Greetings!" boomed this cheery vision, raising one hand, palm
outward, in mystic salute. He beamed upon the frowning Jock.
"How's the infant prodigy!" The fact that Jock's frown deepened to
a scowl ruffled him not at all. "And what," went on he, crossing
his feet and leaning negligently against Mrs. McChesney's desk,
"and what can I do for thee, fair lady?"

[Illustration: "'Greetings!'"]

"For me?" said Emma McChesney, looking up at him through narrowed
eyelids. "I'll tell you what. You can explain to me, in what
they call a few well-chosen words, just how you, or any other
living creature, could manage to turn in an expense account like
that on a six-weeks' missionary trip through the Middle West."

"Dear lady,"--in the bland tones that one uses to an unreasonable
child,--"you will need no explanation if you will just remember to
lay the stress on the word missionary. I went forth through the
Middle West to spread the light among the benighted skirt trade.
This wasn't a selling trip, dear lady. It was a buying expedition.
And I had to buy, didn't I? all the way from Michigan to Indiana."

He smiled down at her, calm, self-assured, impudent. A little
flush grew in Emma McChesney's cheeks.

"I've always said," she began, crisply, "that one could pretty
well judge a man's character, temperament, morals, and physical
make-up by just glancing at his expense account. The trouble with
you is that you haven't learned the art of spending money wisely.
It isn't always the man with the largest expense sheet that gets
the most business. And it isn't the man who leaves the greatest
number of circles on the table top in his hotel room, either."
She paused a moment. Ed Meyers's smile had lost some of its