ow anxious he was
to get all the threads of this in his hand and to see that everything
came to an ideal fruition. He dreaded the hour when he might have
something to contend with which was not quite right.

Days passed at this new work and then weeks, and by degrees he grew
moderately sure of himself and comparatively easy in his seat, though he
realized that he had not stepped into a bed of roses. He found this a
most tempestuous office to work in, for Summerfield was, as he expressed
it, "on the job" early and late, and tireless in his insistence and
enthusiasm. He came down from his residence in the upper portion of the
city at eight-fifty in the morning and remained almost invariably until
six-thirty and seven and not infrequently until eight and nine in the
evening. He had the inconsiderate habit of keeping such of his staff as
happened to be working upon the thing in which he was interested until
all hours of the night; sometimes transferring his deliberations to his
own home and that without dinner or the proffer of it to those whom he
made to work. He would talk advertising with one big merchant or another
until it was time to go home, and would then call in the weary members
of his staff before they had time to escape and begin a long and
important discussion of something he wanted done. At times, when
anything went wrong, he would fly into an insane fury, rave and curse
and finally, perhaps, discharge the one who was really not to blame.
There were no end of labored and irritating conferences in which hard
words and sarcastic references would fly about, for he had no respect
for the ability or personality of anyone who worked for him. They were
all more or less machines in his estimation and rather poorly
constructed ones at that. Their ideas were not good enough unless for
the time being they happened to be new, or as in Eugene's case
displaying pronounced talent.

He could not fathom Eugene so readily, for he had never met anyone of
his kind. He was looking closely in his case, as he was in that of all
the others, to see if he could not find some weakness in his ideas. He
had a gleaming, insistent, almost demoniac eye, a habit of chewing
incessantly and even violently the stub end of a cigar, the habit of
twitching, getting up and walking about, stirring things on his desk,
doing anything and everything to give his restless, generative energy a
chance to escape.

"Now, professor," he would say when Eugen