d many of the Mercuries decidedly less Barkis-like than of
old.

Queed lived now in the glow of perfect physical health, a very different
thing, as Fifi had once pointed out, from merely not feeling sick. In
the remarkable development that his body was undergoing, he had found an
unexpected pride. But the Mercury, though he hardly realized it at the
time, was useful to him in a bigger way than bodily improvement.

Here he met young men who were most emphatically in touch with life.
They treated him as an equal with reference to his waxing muscular
efficiency, and with some respect as regards his journalistic
connection. "Want you to shake hands with the editor of the _Post_," so
kindly Buck would introduce him. After the bouts or the "exhibition" of
a Saturday, there was always a smoker, and in the highly instructed and
expert talk of his club-mates the Doctor learned many things that were
to be of value to him later on. Some of the Mercuries, besides their
picturesque general knowledge, knew much more about city politics than
ever got into the papers. There was Jimmy Wattrous, for example, already
rising into fame as Plonny Neal's most promising lieutenant. Jimmy bared
his heart with the Mercuries, and was particularly friendly with the
representative of the great power which moulds public opinion. Now and
then, Neal himself looked in, Plonny, the great boss, who was said to
hold the city in the hollow of his hand. Many an editorial that
surprised and pleased Colonel Cowles was born in that square room back
of Stark's.

And all these things took time ... took time.... And there were nights
when Queed woke wide-eyed with cold sweat on his brow and the cold fear
in his heart that he and posterity were being cheated, that he was
making an irretrievable and ghastly blunder.

Desperate months were May, June, and July for the little Doctor. In all
this time he never once put his own pencil to his own paper. Manuscript
and Schedule lay locked together in a drawer, toward which he could
never bear to glance. Thirteen hours a day he gave to the science of
editorial writing; two hours a day to the science of physical culture;
one hour a day (computed average) to the science of Human Intercourse;
but to the Science of Sciences never an hour on never a day. The rest
was food and sleep. Such was his life for three months; a life that
would have been too horrible to contemplate, had it not been that in all
of his new sciences he