a bit fawning. He wiped away the moisture patches beside his
nose with a purple handkerchief, and put it back into his outside breast
pocket with the corners sticking out like attentive ears. He crossed his
legs and set on his knee an ankle clothed in a purple silk stocking. On
account of his rotundity he was compelled to hold the ankle in place in
the firm clutch of his hand. He settled his purple tie with the other
hand.

"I'm glad I was in reach when you wanted me," he assured Mr. Marston.
"I'm just in on the _Triton_. And I want to tell you that you're running
that steamboat line in the way an American business man wants to have
it run. If I had been on any other line, sir, I wouldn't have been
here to-day when you were looking for me. Everything else on the coast
prowling along half-speed, but down slammed the old _Triton_, scattering
'em out from underfoot like an auto going through a flock of chickens,
but not a jar or a scrape or a jolt, and into her dock, through two days
of thick fog, exactly on the dot. That's the way an American wants to be
carried, sir."

"I believe so, Mr. Fogg," agreed Julius Marston. "And that's why we feel
it's going to be a good thing for all the coast lines to be under one
management--our management."

"Exactly!"

"It's true progress--true benefit to travelers, stockholders, and all
concerned. Consolidation instead of rivalry. I believe in it."

"Exactly!"

"As a broad-gauged business man--big enough to grasp big matters--you
have seen how consolidation effects reforms."

"No two ways about it," affirmed Mr. Fogg.

"That was very good missionary work you did in the matter of the Sound &
Cape line--very good indeed."

"It's astonishing what high and lofty ideas some stockholders have
about properties they're interested in. In financial matters the poorest
conclusion a man can draw is that a stock will always continue to pay
dividends simply because it always has done so. I had to set off a
pretty loud firecracker to wake those Sound & Cape fellows up. I had to
show 'em what damage the new deals and competition and our combination
would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates.
Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value
notions." Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the
intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly
into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. "I don't want to praise my own
humble effo