Remington's trail, but now he found it awaiting him in his
office.

Usually, Penny was the late one. It was this light-hearted young man's
custom to blow in with so engaging an expression and so cheerful a
manner that any comment on his unpunctuality was impossible. Today,
instead of a gay-hearted young man, he looked more like a sentencing
judge.

What he wanted to know was,

"What have you done to Betty Sheridan? Do you mean to say that you had
the nerve to send her away, send her out of my office without consulting
me--and for a reason like that? How did you think I was going to feel
about it?"

"I didn't think about you," said George.

"You bet you didn't. You thought about number one and your precious
vanity. Why, if one were to separate you from your vanity, one couldn't
see you when you were going down the street. Go on, make a frock coat
gesture! Play the brilliant but outraged young district attorney. Do you
know what it was to do a thing of that kind--to fire a girl because she
didn't agree with you?"

"It wasn't because she didn't agree with me," George interrupted, with
heat.

"It was the act of a cad," Penny finished. "Look here, young man, I'm
going to tell you a few plain truths about yourself. You're not the sort
of person that you think you are. You've deceived yourself the way other
people are deceived about you--by your exterior. But inside of that
good-looking carcass of yours there's a brain composed of cheese. You
weren't only a cad to do it--you were a fool!" "You can't use that tone
to me!" cried George.

"Oh, can't I just? By Jove, it's things like that that make one wake up.
Now I know why women have a passion for suffrage. I never knew before,"
Penny went on, with more passion than logic. "You had a nerve to make
that statement of yours. You're a fine example of chivalry. You let
loose a few things when you wrote that fool statement, but you did a
worse trick when you fired Betty Sheridan. God, you're a pinhead--from
the point of view of mere tactics. Sometimes I wonder whether you've
_any_ brain."

George had turned white with anger.

"That'll just about do," he remarked.

"Oh, no, it won't," said Penny. "It won't do at all. I'm not going to
remain in a firm where things like this can happen. I wouldn't risk my
reputation and my future. You're going to do the decent thing. You're
going to Betty Sheridan and tell her what you think of yourself. She
won't come back, I suppose,