to be paid a
cent!

I waltzed away on air to write an account of the whole affair to Freddy,
and dictate a plan of operations. I was justified in feeling proud of
myself. Most men would have tamely submitted to their fate instead of
chasing up all the Joneses of Jonesville! Freddy sent me an early
answer--a gay, happy, overflowing little note--telling me to try and
engage Doctor Jones for a three-day house-party at Morristown. I was to
telegraph when he could come, and was promised an official invitation
from Mrs. Matthewman. (She was the aunt, you know, that they lived
with--one of those old porcelain ladies with a lace cap and a
rent-roll.) However, I could not do anything for two days, for we had
reached a crisis in the labor troubles, and matters were approaching the
breaking point. We were threatened with one of those "sympathetic"
strikes that drive business men crazy. There was no question at issue
between ourselves and our employes; but the thing ramified off somewhere
to the sugar vacuum-boiler riveters' union. Finally the S.V.B.R.U. came
to a settlement with their bosses, and peace was permitted to descend on
Hodge & Westoby's.

I took immediate advantage of it to descend myself on Doctor Jones. He
received me with open arms and an insomniacal outburst. He had been
reading up; he had been seeing distinguished confreres; he had been
mastering the subject to the last dot, and was panting to begin. I hated
to dampen such friendship and ardor by telling him that I had completely
recovered. Under the circumstances it seemed brutal--but I did it. The
poor fellow tried to argue with me, but I insisted that I now slept like
a top. It sounded horribly ungrateful. Here I was spurning the treasures
of his mind, and almost insulting him with my disgusting good health. I
swerved off to the house-party; Eleanor's delight, and so on; Mrs.
Matthewman's pending invitation; the hope that he might have an early
date free--

He listened to it all in silence, walking restlessly about the office,
his blue eyes shining with a strange light. He took up a bronze
paper-weight and gazed at it with an intensity of self-absorption.

"I can't go," he said.

"Oh, but you have to," I exclaimed.

"Mr. Westoby," he resumed, "I was foolish enough to back a friend's
credit at a store here. He has skipped to Minnesota, and I am left with
three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents to pay. To take a
three days' holiday would be a