of blinks at that; but it don't fetch him.

"Who's Dicky, your whisperin' friend?" says I.

"Nobody much," says he. "His father's a Senator."

"Well, say, now," says I, "you didn't want me to chase a Senator's son
and a real swell girl like Sis off into a place like the general office
reception room, did you! And wouldn't it have been a nice break if I'd
let out that we was smotherin' the Great Skid under a twelve-dollar
job?"

"Was that why you had the impudence to appropriate my office?" says he.

"That was part of it," says I.

And that gives me an openin' to tell him the whole tale about Mallory,
from the hall bedroom act to the way he'd been postin' himself.

"You think he's a valuable man, do you?" says Mr. Robert.

"Valuable!" says I. "Why, he's all the goods. What if he did learn to
talk Greek once? He's forgettin' it, ain't he? And look at the way he
stands up to trouble! Don't that show there's good stuff in him?"

"Well," says he, "what would you suggest?"

"Ah, say!" says I. "Couldn't you give a guess? Why, if I was you I'd fix
it so that when Sis comes back to town she wouldn't find him on no kid's
job. I'd give him a show to get his name painted on a door somewhere."

"Torchy," says he, punchin' the button for his secretary, "I shouldn't
wonder if we did."

CHAPTER IV

FROSTING THE PROFESS

Chee! but I'm gettin' to be useful! Course, I don't figure out no awful
slump in Corrugated stocks if I should get pettish some day and tell 'em
they'd got to find a new office boy. That ain't the kind of shredded
thought I'm feedin' on. I fit into a lot of places besides the chair
behind the brass gate. Why, I have to put on a sub. three or four times
a week, while I'm spreadin' myself out all over the lot.

It all come of their makin' me special messenger to the boss; for since
old Mr. Ellins has been laid up with toothache in his knee joints
they've been chasin' me up to the Fift'-ave. ranch, with mail, and blank
bonds to be signed, and such truck. And that's how I came to get so
thick with Marjorie.

I was waitin' in the front hall, pipin' off the gorgerifousness, when
some one pushes in through the draperies L. U. E. and I'm discovered.
And, say, she was a magnum, all right! You know the sort of pippins they
pick out to hang up by a string in the fruit store window? Well, that
was her style. Big? She'd fit close in a Morris chair! And she didn't
look more'n eighteen or nineteen, either.