"Thunderation," bawled Obadiah, shrilly, exploding with pent up aggravation. "Have you gone out of your wits?" He surveyed the lawyer as if he really believed his legal mentality to be addled. "Can't I get it into your head--" he cast a look of utter contempt at the ma.s.sive cranium of the lawyer--"that my interest in this case is to keep my daughter out of court? If it wasn't for her, I'd let that brittle shanked motorcycling a.s.s sue until they grow bananas in Canada."

"Your verbal pyrotechnics are interesting but hardly germane to the subject," Hezekiah reproved his employer. "I have no intention of dragging your daughter into court in the guise of a Portia, although her beauty would----"

Obadiah's temper was on edge. "Come to the point, sir," he demanded.

"Cut out the hot air. My time is worth money."

For a moment Hezekiah gazed thoughtfully out of a window making strange gestures with his gla.s.ses. Then, turning to the mill owner he smilingly agreed. "As much valuable time has been utilized by you in prolix descriptions, possibly amusing, a.s.suredly slanderous and not tending in the slightest degree to shed light upon our problem, I admit a necessity for expedition."

Obadiah viewed his attorney with wrathful eyes but remained silent.

Even under the angry eyes of his employer a benignant look lighted the countenance of the lawyer and his voice was very gentle as he resumed, "It's an old adage--'Youth will be served.' In its arrogance, youth defies the wisdom of age and the judgment of the ages. In its careless irresponsibility, it knows not danger. In its a.s.surance and self-confidence it knows not fear. Clad in the armor of health, it basks in the sunshine of its strength and blatantly rejoices in its hopes."

"Hezekiah Wilkins, are you sick, or what in the devil is the matter with you?" inquired the overwrought manufacturer.

"No, not sick, Obadiah," Hezekiah explained placidly, "not sick, but happy--happy in that thought--a distinctly attractive one, and exceptionally well-developed for your benefit. I regret," the lawyer lamented, "that a stenographer was not present to preserve it. It is a pity that the world should lose it--that it should be lost to those who would understand and appreciate it--even love it."

Obadiah sank deep into his chair, encircled by gloom, as, appreciating his inability to direct the train of his legal adviser's thought, he allowed that worthy to pursue his own course.

"Youth calls to youth," the sentimental Hezekiah continued. "Youth understands youth. Youth can persuade youth." Suddenly the attorney seemed to thrust aside the gentle atmosphere in which he had been immersed, and, fixing a most crafty look upon Obadiah, he snapped, "You and I can't handle that fellow, but your daughter can. It's going to cost you some money, though." He suffered a relapse. "Youth knows neither the value of time nor money."

Obadiah was filled with relief. "By gum, you've hit it," he shouted.

"But why couldn't you get that off your chest without throwing a fit?"

he complained, ill-humoredly.

Once more Hezekiah reverted to sentiment. "The language of youth is song, and its thought poetry," he sighed, after which he arose and faced the manufacturer across his desk. "I am authorized to proceed in accordance with my plan?" he asked--"to make the best settlement which in my judgment can be made in the premises, through," he chuckled, "the extraordinary channels to which I have recourse?"

"Go the limit, only keep it out of court," grumbled Obadiah. "Give such instructions as you wish to Virginia and let her understand that I am only interested in an amicable adjustment and do not care to be bothered with details."

As Hezekiah departed through the outer office, he interrupted a conversation between Mr. Jones and Kelly.

The stenographer met the intrusion with characteristic activity. Rushing to his desk, he seized the recently typed letters and bore them into Obadiah's presence. His haste, if noted by the attorney, should have indicated that prolonged presence in the throne room had resulted in marked delay to the normal performance of imperial functions.

Apparently Hezekiah's mind was engrossed by lighter matters. He moved spryly, whistling a cheery melody not at present in vogue but much in favor in his youth.

Mr. Jones came out of Obadiah's room hurriedly. The sound of stern reproof came also, until it was shut off by the closing of the door. It seemed as if the spirit of the stenographer expanded in relief, in the familiar atmosphere of his own domain; as one who, having accomplished a hazardous journey, returns to the peace of his own fireside.

He entered Kelly's room with great dignity. Taking a position in the center, he raised his arms horizontally, inhaled a deep breath, bowed deeply, straightened up, exhaled, rose on his toes, descended, and dropped his arms.

The ma.s.sive Kelly viewed this athletic exhibition with interest.

"What's that exercise for?" he demanded.

Mr. Jones yawned. "It gives me relaxation from the strain," he answered.

"What strain? Where did you strain yourself?" asked Kelly with kindly interest in his friend's welfare.

"The office responsibility," explained the stenographer. "It knocks the sap out of a fellow." He lighted a cigarette.

"Oh, is that it?" Kelly gave a cruel laugh. "I thought you had sprung something. If you do that exercise often, young fellow, you'll bust a lung. Let's see you do it again," urged the bookkeeper, as if desirous of witnessing the fulfillment of his prophecy.

Without fear, Mr. Jones laid aside his cigarette with care, and gulped such a deep draught of air that he became red in the face and gave other evidences of being about to burst from undue pneumatic pressure.

Kelly viewed with undisguised amus.e.m.e.nt the undeveloped protuberance thrust forward in pride by the stenographer. "You haven't the chest expansion of a lizard," he told him.

Mr. Jones received this deadly insult in the midst of deep bowing. He exploded, and, leaning against a desk, breathed rapidly while the injured look in his eyes attempted to carry that reproof which his speechlessness otherwise forbade.

"If you do that exercise much," Kelly gloomily predicted, "you are going to relax in a wooden box. Who gave you that stuff? You must have been getting your ideas from the gymnasium of a bug house."

For obvious reasons Mr. Jones failed to reply.

"There is no sense in the thing. What you need is--" Kelly descended from his perch and seizing him, only that instant recovered from speechlessness, in his strong grasp, made exploratory investigations with his fingers throughout the panting one's anatomy.

"Ouch," wailed the pained Mr. Jones.

"Shut up. Do you want the old man out here? I'm not going to hurt you.

I want to find out what ails you."

"Leggo, you are nearly killing me."

Mr. Jones rubbed himself ruefully when Kelly loosed him. "You big stiff, ain't you got no sense, gouging around in a fellow's insides that way?

You are liable to put a man out of business," he protested.

Utterly indifferent to these complaints, Kelly was judging the stenographer coldly and dispa.s.sionately. "You've got no bone.

You've got no muscle. You've got no fat." Kelly forgot that pride and dignity are intangible a.s.sets. "You'd better take correct breathing exercises or you'll get T. B.," he told him. "I shouldn't be surprised if you've got it now."

Naturally, Mr. Jones was greatly alarmed and showed it.

"Here's the way to take a breathing exercise." Kelly slowly inhaled a mighty volume of air until his chest arched forth in all of its magnificent development. He held it so for a moment and beat upon it resoundingly in accordance with the supposed custom of the orang-outang in moments of victory. "No tuberculosis there," he boasted, after exhaling with the rush of a gale of wind.

"That's some expansion, Kelly," the stenographer admitted, and he continued as in excuse for his own physical deficiencies, "I should take more exercise. My work is confining, and the strain is heavy. I'm all run down. The old man must have noticed it, too, because the other day he says to me, 'Mr. Jones, you're working too hard--it's telling on you--I'd give you a good rest if I could manage to get along without you.'"

Kelly burst into a roar of laughter. "If you wait for the old man to give you a rest, my son, you are going to get tired, believe me. Cut out the bluff for a minute. I want to talk seriously to you. You're in rotten physical condition and you owe it to yourself to keep from playing leading man at a funeral."

Mr. Jones's countenance registered horror.

Kelly went on. "I happen to know a darn sight more about physical training than I do about book-keeping. I ought to--I spent enough time around a college gymnasium when I should have been some place else."

Even Mr. Jones's alarm faded before this astounding information.

"College," he remarked in surprise.

"Sure," Kelly grinned, "I spent a couple of years in college. I'm proud of them. I nearly flunked out before I learned that I leaned to muscle instead of to literature." He returned to the subject under discussion. "I can give you a bunch of exercises which will do you a lot of good in six months if you are faithful. I'll give you gentle exercises at first, darn gentle," he laughed, "otherwise you'll snap something. I believe that I'll make a man out of you, young gra.s.shopper." He shook his head wearily. "Gosh, but it's going to take a lot of work."

Mr. Jones flushed hotly. "Say," he said, "it's not necessary to insult me, is it?"

"Yes, you've got to use a harpoon to get anything through that rhinoceros' hide of egotism of yours." He fastened a stern and foreboding eye upon Mr. Jones. "Do you want to die?" he inquired.

Mr. Jones sought the motive behind the startling question. "What's going to kill me?" he demanded.

"Lack of air." Kelly's answer was obscure. It was too general. He thought it necessary to restate it with modifying amendments. "The lack of good fresh air," he concluded.