From every point of view
a partnership with the young iron-founder promised to afford the golden
opportunity. The industry was comparatively small and self-contained;
and Raymer was himself openly committed to the cause of uplifting.
Griswold waited patiently; he was still waiting on the Wednesday
afternoon when Raymer called him over the telephone and made the
appointment for a meeting at the house in Shawnee Street.

"Your 'pair of minutes' must have found something to grow upon," laughed
the patient waiter, when Raymer, finding Mrs. Holcomb's front door open,
had climbed the stair to the newly established literary workshop. "I've
had time to smoke a pipe and write a complete paragraph since you called
up."

Raymer flung himself into a chair at the desk-end and reached for a pipe
in the curiously carved rack which had been one of Griswold's small
extravagances in the refurnishing.

"Yes," he said; "Margery Grierson drove up while I was unhitching, and I
had to stop and talk to her. Which reminds me: she says you're giving
Mereside the go-by since you set up for yourself. Are you?"

"Not intentionally," Griswold denied; and he let it stand at that.

"I shouldn't, if I were you," Raymer advised. "Margery Grierson is any
man's good friend; and pretty soon you'll be meeting people who will
lift their eyebrows when you speak of her. You mustn't make her pay for
that."

"I'm not likely to," was the sober rejoinder. "My debt to Miss Grierson
is a pretty big one, Raymer; bigger than you suspect, I imagine."

"I'm glad to hear you put the debt where it belongs, leaving her father
out of it. You don't owe him anything; not even a cup of cold water.
There's a latter-day buccaneer for you!" he went on, warming to his
subject like a man with a sore into which salt has been freshly rubbed.
"That old timber-wolf wouldn't spare his best friend--allowing that
anybody could be his friend. By Jove! he's making me sweat blood, all
right!"

"How is that?" asked Griswold.

"I've been on the edge of telling you two or three times, but next to a
quitter I do hate the fellow who puts his fingers into a trap and then
squawks when the trap nips him. Grierson has got me down and he is about
to cut my throat, Griswold."

"Tell me about it," said the one who had been patiently waiting to be
told.

"It begins back a piece, but I'll brief it for you. I suppose you've
been told how Grierson came here a few years ago with a wad of money