This was the Simeon Tetlow of three years ago. Then there entered, one morning, in response to his summons for a call-boy, a short, square youth with a dull face. Simeon did not note him as he came in. He forgot that he had called for a boy. His mind was busy with projects of import. When it came back, with a start, he recognized that some one had been with him, for ten minutes or more, who had not worried and irritated him by merely being alive. He shot a keen glance at the dull face. The light of the eyes was turned to him, waiting to serve him. After that Simeon summoned the boy again and again, on one pretext or another. He made excuses to see him. He advanced him from post to post. At last, about a year ago, he nodded at a desk that had been installed, overnight, across the room: “You are to work there and your pay will be raised a hundred.” The boy took possession of the desk with as little stir as if he had received some casual order. He did not ask what his work was to be, and Simeon Tetlow did not tell him. The big brain had found hands and feet--almost, it might seem, lungs and a few other useful, vital organs--and it used them, as it had used the nervous, shaking body before--relentlessly. For the first time in his life Simeon found his papers ready to his hand. He attended his first directors’ meeting, sitting at the head of the green baize table, like a man in a dream. The right paper slipped to his finger-tips and lingered there; the figures formed themselves in seemly ranks and marched up and down the green baize parade in orderly file. The effect upon the directors was, at first, a little startling. They had become wonted to Simeon hurried, gasping, and impatient--and to dividends. They were almost afraid of these cold facts and figures. They looked at them cautiously, through gold-rimmed glasses, received their dividends--and took heart. Each day some new comfort found its way to Simeon’s desk. The morning that the box of elastic bands appeared there was a holocaust of joy among the papers. He used nearly the whole box the first day. He had never owned an elastic band before. He was president of the great corporation, but it had not occurred to him that he had a right to elastic bands. He slid them up and down his nervous fingers in sheer energy of delight. But he did not mention them to John, nor John to him. It was John who provided the new letter-file that cut the work in half, and had the grimy windows washed till they shone like plate, and arranged the desk ’phone so that Simeon could dictate to the stenographer three floors below, without knowing, or caring, who sat at the other end taking his crisp words with harried, compliant fingers. Hitherto, dictating had burdened Simeon’s life. He had written dozens of letters himself rather than endure the presence of a stenographer for even half an hour; and the sound of a girl clacking drove him wild.