th the local division of the
Eastern Conference. The Eastern Conference was an organization to
which most of the leading companies belonged. Its function was the
orderly regulation of all matters affecting its members' relations with
their agents. Theoretically its primary purpose was to prevent the
overcompensation of some agents at the expense of others. If it did
not always succeed in doing this, it did at least succeed in making
extremely embarrassing the lot of any company operating outside of its
organization. It was everywhere an arbitrary body, and its New York
State branch was perhaps the least disciplined of any of its
constituent parts, and was moreover suspected of favoring some of its
own members at the expense of others. President Wintermuth, loyal to
his associates, but patient only up to a certain point, had of late
begun to consider that his company was decidedly in the latter class.
It was easy to see that a diplomat's hand was needed to accomplish what
Smith was sent to accomplish, and Smith could be a diplomat of parts
when the need arose; but his instructions from Mr. O'Connor had left
him so little latitude that he was obliged to return without securing
any positive action of any sort.

"They will take the matter up at the next meeting," he reported.

O'Connor transmitted this report to the President with an expression of
disappointment.

"We ought to have had that thing fixed up. And if it had been handled
right, it would have been fixed up now," he said.

Whereat the President, with one of his flashes of clear vision, replied
suavely, "And who gave Smith his instructions?"

It was only a chance shot on Mr. Wintermuth's part, but it went
straight to the mark, and it rankled. O'Connor knew--or felt
reasonably sure--that Smith had not mentioned the matter to any one but
himself, yet the chief had struck unerringly the nail's head. And all
this endeared Smith but little to the man who had never liked him.

It is none too comfortable to work for a man who will covertly begrudge
you your successes and indifferently conceal his satisfaction at your
mistakes; for the stoutest hearted it is a discouraging business. This
Smith found it, and he would have found it still more discouraging had
it not been for the exuberance of his enthusiasm for his profession and
his healthy appetite for most real things that came his way--real work,
real pleasures, real sport, and perhaps a few real follies.