th eyes closed and red lips moving rhythmically in the sucking of a
lozenge, the slips of his speech ready in his hand. The secretary said
in his cheerful voice: "Time, sir."

Old Heythorp swallowed, lifted his arms, rose with help, and walked
through to his place at the centre of the table. The five directors
followed. And, standing at the chairman's right, the secretary read
the minutes, forming the words precisely with his curling tongue. Then,
assisting the chairman to his feet, he watched those rows of faces, and
thought: 'Mistake to let them see he can't get up without help. He ought
to have let me read his speech--I wrote it.'

The chairman began to speak:

"It is my duty and my pleasure,' ladies and gentlemen, for the
nineteenth consecutive year to present to you the directors' report and
the accounts for the past twelve months. You will all have had special
notice of a measure of policy on which your Board has decided, and to
which you will be asked to-day to give your adherence--to that I shall
come at the end of my remarks...."

"Excuse me, sir; we can't hear a word down here."

'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I was expecting that.'

The chairman went on, undisturbed. But several shareholders now rose,
and the same speaker said testily: "We might as well go home. If the
chairman's got no voice, can't somebody read for him?"

The chairman took a sip of water, and resumed. Almost all in the last
six rows were now on their feet, and amid a hubbub of murmurs the
chairman held out to the secretary the slips of his speech, and fell
heavily back into his chair.

The secretary re-read from the beginning; and as each sentence fell from
his tongue, he thought: 'How good that is!' 'That's very clear!' 'A neat
touch!' 'This is getting them.' It seemed to him a pity they could not
know it was all his composition. When at last he came to the Pillin sale
he paused for a second.

"I come now to the measure of policy to which I made allusion at the
beginning of my speech. Your Board has decided to expand your enterprise
by purchasing the entire fleet of Pillin & Co., Ltd. By this transaction
we become the owners of the four steamships Smyrna, Damascus, Tyre, and
Sidon, vessels in prime condition with a total freight-carrying capacity
of fifteen thousand tons, at the low inclusive price of sixty thousand
pounds. Gentlemen, de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!"--it was the
chairman's phrase, his bit of the speech, and the