ry's voice made his friend turn and survey him.

"You look tired. You're working too hard. Don't make the western mistake
of thinking frazzled nerves mean energy."

"That isn't my kind," Ellery smiled. "I'm all right. Let me spurt for a
while. I got my position through favor, Dick, yours and Uncle Joe's. I
didn't particularly deserve it, and I didn't know anything about the
work; so, for your sake as well as my own, I have determined to make
good. Friendship may give a fellow his chance, but it doesn't hold down
a job, you know."

"Pooh! You've made good already. A man can be tremendously
experienced--for the West--when he's been at a thing a year. Look at me
and my work."

"What do you consider your work? Road inspector?" For, to tell the
truth, Norris was not wholly satisfied with Dick's year of dawdling
around the streets.

"My profession," Dick answered with oracular gravity, "is a combination
of hard work and fine art. It requires both toil and genius. I think I
may say, with all natural modesty, that I have shown great natural
aptitude for it. My profession is making friends. I have made friends
useful and ornamental, friends great and small, friends beautiful and
friends the opposite--which reminds me of your previous question, city
politics. Whom do you suppose I supped with last night?"

"Whom?"

"With the Honorable, or by courtesy dubbed Honorable, William Barry,"
Dick replied triumphantly.

"'Piggy' Barry?" ejaculated Ellery, turning on Dick in surprise.
"Alderman Barry? The boss?"

"'Piggy' does somehow sound more appropriate than 'Honorable'," Dick
said meditatively.

"And is he one of the people you like?" questioned Ellery with unfeigned
surprise.

"For business purposes, yes. If I'm going to get into politics some day,
it becomes me to cultivate local statesmen, doesn't it? I took the great
man to the theater, or at least to something that called itself the
theater, and I gave him an excellent supper afterward. He seemed to
appreciate it and my society."

"I dare say you made yourself agreeable. Do you expect he will help you
in your public career?"

"Not voluntarily, perhaps; but I wanted to know him, better and better.
Under benign influences, he is indiscreet. He reminded me last night of
Louis XIV. He might have said, 'St. Etienne, it is I,' but in his
simpler and less sophisticated language, he was content to remark, 'I'm
the whole damn show, see?'"

"I'm glad he knew enough to p