butterfly kind. If I do--good
night!"

CHAPTER XV

BEING SICCED ON PERCEY

Maybe it ain't figured in the headlines, or been noised around enough
for the common stockholders to get panicky over it, but, believe me, it
was some battle! Uh-huh! What else could you expect with Old Hickory
Ellins on one side and George Wesley Jones on the other? And me? Say,
as it happens, I was right on the firin' line. Talk about your drummer
boys of '61--I guess the office boy of this A. M. ain't such a dead one!

Course I knew when Piddie begins tiptoein' around important, and Mr.
Robert cuts his lunchtime down to an hour, that there's something in
the air besides humidity.

"Boy," says Old Hickory, shootin' his words out past the stub of a
thick black cigar, "I'm expecting a Mr. Jones sometime this afternoon."

"Yes, Sir," says I. "Any particular Jones, Sir?"

"That," says he, "is a detail with which you need not burden your mind.
I am not anticipating a convention of Joneses."

"Oh!" says I. "I was only thinkin' that in case some other guy by the
same names should----"

"Yes, I understand," he breaks in; "but in that remote contingency I
will do my best to handle the situation alone. And when Mr. Jones
comes show him in at once. After that I am engaged for the remainder
of the day. Is that quite clear?"

"I'm next," says I. "Pass a Jones, and then set the block."

If he thought he could mesmerize me by any such simple motions as that
he had another guess. Why, even if it had been my first day on the
job, I'd have been hep that it wa'n't any common weekday Jones he was
expectin' to stray in accidental. Besides, the minute I spots that
long, thin nose, the close-cropped, grizzly mustache, and the tired
gray eyes with the heavy bags underneath, I knew it was George Wesley
himself. Ain't his pictures been printed often enough lately?

He looks the part too, and no wonder! If I'd been hammered the way he
has, with seventeen varieties of Rube Legislatures shootin' my past
career as full of holes as a Swiss cheese, grand juries handin' down
new indictments every week end, four thousand grouchy share-holders
howlin' about pared dividends, and twice as many editorial pens
proddin' 'em along----well, take it from me, I'd be on my way towards
the tall trees with my tongue hangin' out!

Here he is, though, with his shoulders back and a sketchy, sarcastic
smile flickerin' in his mouth corners as he shows up for