that when he seemed to be on the opposite side yet he was
in reality pulling with the lawyer.

Sidney Meeks was older than Henry, and as unsuccessful as a country
lawyer can well be. He lived by himself; he had never married; and
the world, although he smiled at it facetiously, was not a pleasant
place in his eyes.

Henry, after he had washed himself at the sink in the shop, entered
the kitchen, where the table was set, and passed through to the
sitting-room, where the lawyer was. Sidney Meeks did not rise. He
extended one large, white hand affably. "How are you Henry?" said he,
giving the other man's lean, brown fingers a hard shake. "I dropped
in here on my way home from the post-office, and your wife tempted me
with flapjacks in a lordly dish, and I am about to eat."

"Glad to see you," returned Henry.

"You get home early, or it seems early, now the days are getting so
long," said Meeks, as Henry sat down opposite.

"Yes, it's early enough, but I don't get any more pay."

Meeks laughed. "Henry, you are the direct outcome of your day and
generation," said he. "Less time, and more pay for less time, is our
slogan."

"Well, why not?" returned Henry, surlily, still with a dawn of
delighted opposition in his thin, intelligent face. "Why not? Look at
the money that's spent all around us on other things that correspond.
What's an automobile but less time and more money, eh?"

Meeks laughed. "Give it up until after supper, Henry," he said, as
Sylvia's thin, sweet voice was heard from the next room.

"If you men don't stop talking and come right out, these flapjacks
will be spoiled!" she cried. The men arose and obeyed her call.
"There are compensations for everything," said Meeks, laughing, as he
settled down heavily into his chair. He was a large man. "Flapjacks
are compensations. Let us eat our compensations and be thankful.
That's my way of saying grace. You ought always to say grace, Henry,
when you have such a good cook as your wife is to get meals for you.
If you had to shift for yourself, the way I do, you'd feel that it
was a simple act of decency."

"I don't see much to say grace for," said Henry, with a disagreeable
sneer.

"Oh, Henry!" said Sylvia.

"For compensations in the form of flapjacks, with plenty of butter
and sugar and nutmeg," said Meeks. "These are fine, Mrs. Whitman."

"A good thick beefsteak at twenty-eight cents a pound, regulated by
the beef trust, would be more to my liking after