," he
suggested delicately, "a little extra allowance--let us say an
entertainment fund--to be used in cultivating brokers with an
especially desirable business."

"But," said Mr. Osgood, "we are members of the Boston Board. We cannot
offer any greater inducements to brokers than any of our fellow members
offer."

O'Connor saw his suggestion had not been taken kindly.

"Of course not," he agreed. "Although I know one Boston agent who once
a month plays cards with his best broker, and curiously enough he
always loses exactly five per cent of that broker's account with him
for the previous month. Such things are sickening--and they put at a
disadvantage those of us who live up to our agreements. But I don't
suppose any Board could make a rule preventing an agent from taking a
good customer out to dinner and perhaps the theater once in a
while--that was all I meant to suggest."

Mr. Osgood, who felt considerable doubt as to this innocent limitation,
rose.

"I presume you would like my decision, Mr. O'Connor," he said, in a low
voice.

"Why, yes--as soon as convenient--the sooner the better," the other man
replied easily.

"Well, then, I will give it to you now," said the Bostonian. "Mr.
O'Connor, I am an old man; I have lived in this city for nearly seventy
years, and during those years I do not think I ever made a bargain
which I would have been ashamed for the world to have seen. I am too
old to begin to be either disloyal or dishonest now--for I do not see
what else you can call what you have proposed but disloyalty to my
friend Mr. Wintermuth and his company and dishonesty to my associates
in the Boston Board. If I thought you intended to insult me, I would
ask you to leave my office, but I do not think you intended your
proposal as an insult, for I do not believe that by your own code you
are doing anything which that code would condemn."

His visitor started to voice a protest, but the other man stopped him.

"Let me finish," he said. "I have known your former chief, Mr.
Wintermuth, considerably more than half my lifetime. When I resign the
Boston agency of the Guardian, it will be either at his request or
because my day in the insurance world is over and I can no longer give
the company a sufficient business. That is all. And now, Mr.
O'Connor, I do not ask you to leave my office, but I hope you will
never come into it again so long as I am here."

The President of the Salamander got to his