"Ah, cheese it!" says I, buttin' in. "What do you know about it? It was me put up the game, and if Mr. Robert had loafed another half an hour at the club like he usually does, there wouldn't have been any mix up. Say, you leave this to me." Mallory didn't want to leave it like that; but Mr. Robert was holdin' the door open for him, so he couldn't do anything else. When we had it all to ourselves, the boss ranges me up in front of him for the court of inquiry session. "Well?" says he, real solemn. I takes all that in and gives him the wink. "Say," says I, "didn't I have my nerve with me, though?" He kind of blinks at that; but it don't fetch him. "Who's Dicky, your whisperin' friend?" says I. "Nobody much," says he. "His father's a Senator." "Well, say, now," says I, "you didn't want me to chase a Senator's son and a real swell girl like Sis off into a place like the general office reception room, did you! And wouldn't it have been a nice break if I'd let out that we was smotherin' the Great Skid under a twelve-dollar job?" "Was that why you had the impudence to appropriate my office?" says he. "That was part of it," says I. And that gives me an openin' to tell him the whole tale about Mallory, from the hall bedroom act to the way he'd been postin' himself. "You think he's a valuable man, do you?" says Mr. Robert. "Valuable!" says I. "Why, he's all the goods. What if he did learn to talk Greek once? He's forgettin' it, ain't he? And look at the way he stands up to trouble! Don't that show there's good stuff in him?" "Well," says he, "what would you suggest?" "Ah, say!" says I. "Couldn't you give a guess? Why, if I was you I'd fix it so that when Sis comes back to town she wouldn't find him on no kid's job. I'd give him a show to get his name painted on a door somewhere." "Torchy," says he, punchin' the button for his secretary, "I shouldn't wonder if we did." CHAPTER IV FROSTING THE PROFESS Chee! but I'm gettin' to be useful! Course, I don't figure out no awful slump in Corrugated stocks if I should get pettish some day and tell 'em they'd got to find a new office boy. That ain't the kind of shredded thought I'm feedin' on. I fit into a lot of places besides the chair behind the brass gate. Why, I have to put on a sub. three or four times a week, while I'm spreadin' myself out all over the lot. It all come of their makin' me special messenger to the boss; for since old Mr. Ellins has been laid up with toothache in his knee joints they've been chasin' me up to the Fift'-ave. ranch, with mail, and blank bonds to be signed, and such truck. And that's how I came to get so thick with Marjorie.