. Yes, at
eighty, he would! Not that I mean I think you might be tryin' to get the
better of him, Virg. You're a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing
ain't in you. What I mean: I hope there ain't any chance for the ole man
to THINK you might be----"

"Oh, no," Adams interrupted. "As a matter of fact, I don't believe he'll
ever think about it at all, and if he did he wouldn't have any real
right to feel offended at me: the process I'm going to use is one I
expect to change and improve a lot different from the one Campbell and I
worked on for him."

"Well, that's good," said Lohr. "Of course you know what you're up to:
you're old enough, God knows!" He laughed ruefully. "My, but it will
seem funny to me--down there with you gone! I expect you and I both
been gettin' to be pretty much dead-wood in the place, the way the young
fellows look at it, and the only one that'd miss either of us would be
the other one! Have you told the ole man yet?"

"Well----" Adams spoke laboriously. "No. No, I haven't. I thought--well,
that's what I wanted to see you about."

"What can I do?"

"I thought I'd write him a letter and get you to hand it to him for me."

"My soul!" his friend exclaimed. "Why on earth don't you just go down
there and tell him?"

Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stammered, coughed, stammered
again, wrinkling his face so deeply he seemed about to weep; but finally
he contrived to utter an apologetic laugh. "I ought to do that, of
course; but in some way or other I just don't seem to be able to--to
manage it."

"Why in the world not?" the mystified Lohr inquired.

"I could hardly tell you--'less'n it is to say that when you been with
one boss all your life it's so--so kind of embarrassing--to quit him, I
just can't make up my mind to go and speak to him about it. No; I got it
in my head a letter's the only satisfactory way to do it, and I thought
I'd ask you to hand it to him."

"Well, of course I don't mind doin' that for you," Lohr said, mildly.
"But why in the world don't you just mail it to him?"

"Well, I'll tell you," Adams returned. "You know, like that, it'd have
to go through a clerk and that secretary of his, and I don't know who
all. There's a couple of kind of delicate points I want to put in it:
for instance, I want to explain to him how much improvement and so on
I'm going to introduce on the old process I helped to work out with
Campbell when we were working for him, so't he'll und