m the "cage man." To them he had become something of a bluff.
Skinner's pet abomination was cigarettes, and whenever one of these
miniatures in uniform chanced to offend that way, he would turn and frown
down upon the culprit. The first time he did this to Mickey, the
"littlest" messenger boy of the district, who was burning the stub of a
cigarette, Mickey dropped the thing in awe.

But Jimmie of the Postal said, "Don't be scared of _him_! He's locked up
in his cage. He can't get at you!"

So the sobriquet "cage man" was evolved from this chance remark, and the
wit of the thing had spread until everybody had come to think of Skinner
as the "cage man"--a fact which did not add greatly to his dignity.

But on this particular morning the "cage man" was even more harmless than
usual. There was n't a frown in him. He sat at his tall desk and stared
abstractedly at the open pages of his cash-book. He did n't see the
figures on the white page, and he paid no more heed to the messenger
boys, whose presence he was made aware of by the stench of burning paper
and weed, than he did to the clicking, fluttering, feminine activity in
the great square room to his left, over which he was supposed to keep a
supervising eye.

Skinner had stage fright! He had resolved to ask McLaughlin for a raise.
Skinner was afraid of McLaughlin--not physically, for Skinner was not
afraid of anybody that way. He was afraid of him in the way that one man
fears another man who he has hypnotized himself into believing holds his
destiny in his hands. If Skinner had been left to himself, he would
never have asked for a raise, for no advance he could hope to get could
compensate him for the stage fright he'd suffered for months from
thinking about it. No one knew how often he had closed his cash-drawer,
with resolution to go to McLaughlin, and then had opened it again weakly
and gone on with his work. The very fact that he _was_ afraid disgusted
Skinner, for he despised the frightened-rabbit variety of clerk.

It was his wife! She made him do it! Skinner's wife was both his idol
and his idolater. He 'd never been an idol to any one but her. No one
but Honey had ever even taken him seriously. Even the salesmen, whom he
paid off, looked on him only as a man in a cage. But to his wife he was
a hero. When he entered their little house out in Meadevllle, he entered
his kingdom. All of which made it imperative with Skinner to do his very
utm