My cousin looked at me hard, and again answered an unspoken thought of mine. “Are you wondering why hadn’t the boy interrupted long before this, to hold up his end, if he was really so enthusiastic as I’ve said? This is the reason. Though he hadn’t let on to the Manager, he really had had plenty of troubles of his own, already, keeping even his hand-picked crew up to the scratch. Many’s the time he’d been ready to murder them! Drive as hard as he might, he couldn’t keep them steadily up to the standard he’d set for his work. He’d noticed that. Oh, yes, of course, he’d noticed it all right, and he’d been furious about it. But until that minute, he hadn’t thought of it--what it meant; and the minute the Manager spoke, he knew in his bones the old man was right. And he felt things come down with a smash. “It pretty nearly knocked him silly. He never said a word. And the old bald-head looked at him, and saw that in the last three minutes the boy had grown up ... he’d grown up! That hurts, hurts more than any visit to the dentist. I know how he felt; probably the Manager knew how he felt. Anybody who’s ever tried to get anything done has run his head into that stone wall. “Well, he was sorry for the kid, and tried to let him down easy. He went on talking, to give the boy time to catch his breath. ‘You understand, I’d like, maybe more than you, to reorganize the whole ball o’ wax, on any lines that would work better. And there are lots of good points in your plan that we _can_ use, plenty of ’em. This invention of yours about cross-indexing orders now, that is a splendid idea. I believe we could install that ... it looks _almost_ fool proof! And maybe we might run a special mailing-list along the lines you’ve worked out. Lemme look at it again. Well, I guess the mistakes the stenogs would make _might_ be more than offset by the extra publicity ... maybe! “But the lad was feeling too cut up to pay any attention to these little poultices. He stood there, and almost fell in pieces, he was thinking so hard. Not very cheerful thoughts, at that. When he could get his breath he leaned over the table and said in a solemn, horrified voice, ‘Good God, Mr. Burton, why then ... why then....’ He was all but plumb annihilated by the hardness of the fact that had just hit him on the head. He broke out, ‘What’s the _use_ of inventing a better system as long as ... as long as ...?’ he got it out finally. ‘Why, Mr. Burton, there just aren’t enough folks with sense to go around!’” My cousin stood up, moved to the hall, secured his hat and looked in at me through the door-way. “Poor kid!” he commented pityingly. “Just think of his never having thought of that before!” UNCLE ELLIS