erhaps I
could make suggestions sometimes."

She rose, thanking him, and Hal held open the door for her. Once again
he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she
passed him.

"Pretty kid," observed Ellis. "Veltman is crazy about her, they say."

"_Good_ kid, too," added Dr. Surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "You
might tell Veltman that, whoever he is."

"Tell him, yourself," retorted Ellis with entire good nature. "He isn't
the sort to offer gratuitous information to."

Upon this advice, L.P. McQuiggan reentered. "All fixed," said he, with
evident satisfaction. "We went to the mat on rates, but Shearson agreed
to give me some good reading notices. Now, I'll beat it. See you
to-night, Andy?"

Dr. Surtaine nodded. "You owe me a commission, Boyee," said he, smiling
at Hal as McQuiggan made his exit. "But I'll let you off this time. I
guess it won't be the last business I bring in to you. Only, don't you
and Ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. You might
get bit."

"Shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it's good, eh,
Doctor?" said McGuire Ellis. "That's the motto for your practice."

"Right you are, my boy. And it's the motto of sound business. What is
business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a Paean of
Policy. "Why, business is a deal between you and me in which I give you
my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite
reply. Some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. Not
me! I'm satisfied to know that its coming to me. Money has wings, and if
you throw stones at it, it'll fly away fast. And you want to remember,"
he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper
can't be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own
living. Well. I'm not going to preach any more. So long, boys."

"What do you think of it, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired McGuire Ellis, after
the lecturer had gone his way. "Pretty sound sense, eh?"

"I wonder just what you mean by that, Ellis. Not what you say,
certainly."

But Ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy."

Meantime the editor of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently
beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the Sweet Singer
of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esme Elliot.
Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their
acquaintance had developed into a real, if so