looked up Flannery's
telegrams, but they cast no light on it. Then he opened Flannery's
letter and read it. He got up and began walking up and down his office,
stopping now and then to shake the fist in which he had crumpled
Flannery's letter. Then he called for Miss Merrill.

She came, carrying her notebook in one hand and fixing a comb in the
back of her hair with the other.

"Take this!" said the president angrily. "Flannery, Westcote--" He
tramped back and forth, trying to condense all the bitterness that
boiled in him into telling words.

"You are a fool!" he said at length, meaning Flannery and not Miss
Merrill.

Then he thought a while. Having said that, there was not much stronger
that he could say. He had reached his climax too soon.

"Scratch that out," he said, and began walking again. He looked at
Flannery's letter and scowled.

Miss Merrill waited patiently. It gave her an opportunity to primp.

"Never mind, Miss Merrill," said the president finally. "I will call you
later." He was wondering whether he should discharge Flannery, or issue
Webster's Unabridged as General Order Number 720, or what he should do.

And Flannery went on with his letter to Mary O'Donnell, for it was a
work of several days with him. A love-letter was alone enough to worry
him, but, when he had to think of things to say and still keep one eye
on the list of three hundred words, his thoughts got away from him
before he could find whether they had to be put in simplified words or
in the good old go-as-you-please English that he usually wrote.

He was sitting at the desk when a messenger from the head office came
in. The messenger had been sent down to Westcote by the president, and
had just been across to the tag company to fix things up with Mr.
Warold. He had fixed them, and the lever he had used was a paper he held
in his hand. It had mollified Mr. Warold.

As the messenger entered, Flannery looked up from his letter, and he
smiled with pleasure. He was glad to see some one from the head office.
He wanted information about some of the words he was ordered to use. He
was puzzled about "stript." Did it mean "striped" or "stripped"? And
was "tost" the kind of toast you eat or the kind you drink? And how
about that funny-looking combination of letters "thru," and a dozen
others?

"I'm glad t'see th' sight av ye," he said, holding out his hand, "for I
do be wantin' some help on these three hunderd worrds th' prisidint has