red the art of funding, mutual and
otherwise, until he can do it backward with one hand tied behind him.
Torchy, will you step here a moment?"

I was comin' too; but Mr. Ballard waves me off.

"Stop!" says he. "I'll not listen to a word of it. I'd have you know,
Bob Ellins, that I have worried along for sixty-two years without having
been criminally implicated in business affairs. The worst I've done has
been to pose as a dummy director on your rascally board and to see that
my letter of credit was renewed every three months. Use my name if you
must; but allow me to keep a clear conscience. I'm going in now for a
chat with your father, Bob, and if he mentions funding I shall stuff my
fingers in my ears and run. He won't, though. Old Hickory knows me
better. This his door? All right. Thanks. Hah, you old freebooter! In
your den, are you? Well, well!"

At which he stalks into the other office and leaves Mr. Robert and me
grinnin' at each other.

"Listened like you was in Dutch for a minute or so there," says I. "Case
of the cat comin' back, eh?"

"From Kyrle Ballard," says he, "one expects the unexpected. Only we need
not worry about his wanting to become the acting head of your
department. To-morrow or next week he is quite likely to be off again,
bound for some remote corner of the earth, to hobnob with the native
rulers thereof, participate in their games of chance, and invent a new
punch especially suitable for that particular climate."

"Gee!" says I. "That's my idea of a perfectly good boss,--one that gives
his job absent treatment."

I thought too that Mr. Robert had doped out his motions correct; for a
week goes by and no Mr. Ballard shows up to take the rubber stamp away
from me, or even ask fool questions. I was hopin' too that Ballard had
gone a long ways from here, accordin' to custom. Then one night--well,
it was at the theater, one of them highbrow Shaw plays that I was
chucklin' through with Aunt Zenobia.

Eh? Remember her, don't you? Why, she's one of the pair of aunts that I
got half adopted by, 'way back when I first started in with the
Corrugated. Yep, I've been stayin' on with 'em. Why not? Course our
little side street is 'way down in an old-fashioned part of the town;
the upper edge of old Greenwich village, in fact, if you know where that
is.

The house is one of a row that sports about the only survivin' specimens
of the cast-iron grapevine school of architecture. Honest, we got a
doubl