e-President
that he did not regard the remark as an impertinence.

"That may be true, Richard," he said mildly, "although I have held to
the contrary for twenty years. Still, times change, and to-day you may
be right."

"I think I am, sir," returned Smith, respectfully. "At any rate, why
shouldn't the question be laid before the directors?"

"We could do that," agreed Mr. Wintermuth, with, it must be confessed,
a covert feeling of relief. After all, the assimilation of new ideas
is not the most painless of processes, whatever the age of the
assimilator.

"There's no meeting before the January one, is there?"

"No. January fifth--dividend meeting. But that's comparatively soon.
I'll lay it before the board at that time."

"Thank you, sir," said his subordinate, rising; "and I think that at
least one person present will approve a little more elastic financial
policy for the Guardian."

"Mr. Richard Smith?" inquired the President.

"Oh, yes. But I was thinking of Mr. Griswold."

"Well, we shall see," rejoined Mr. Wintermuth; and the conversation
concluded.

The year 1914 dawned clear and cold. There had been an almost daily
snowfall in New York during Christmas week; and although the street
cleaning squad had labored stoutly, a little dusky whiteness still
persisted in the less frequented corners of the city. This had come
near to being the undoing of Mr. Jenkins, the main reliance of the
Pacific Coast accounts and otherwise of considerable importance in the
period of stress and toil known as "statement time."

At the beginning of every year comes this period to every company--the
time when the accounts department becomes, instead of an active thorn
in the company's flesh, the real, essential hub of the whole wheel; the
time when the adding machines are never still and the rooms resound
with the rustle and stir of a thousand sheets of figures, swung
ceaselessly over by practiced and hasty thumbs; when the lights burn
late every night for two weeks on end, and the laboring bookkeepers see
their families only by cinematographic glances between newspaper and
coffee cup in the cold gray mornings.

This time was now come; and the Guardian's men, under the silent but
none the less strenuous urging of Mr. Bartels, had begun the grind
which could end only when the annual statement of the company was in
the printers' hands with proof initialed and approved by Otto Bartels,
Secretary. And this, taken in conj