s heart on coaching the team this fall, and he don't
want to go to work until after the season," said he. "I'm just an old
fool enough to tell him he could wait. I know he ought to be at it
now--you and I were, long before his age; but----"
"Oh, shut up!" interrupted Welton, his big body shaking all over with
mirth. "You talk like a copy-book. I'm not a constituent, and you
needn't run any bluffs on me. You're tickled to death with that boy, and
you are hoping that team will lick the everlasting daylights out of
Chicago, Thanksgiving; and you wouldn't miss the game or have Bob out of
the coaching for the whole of California; and you know it. Send him
along when you get ready."
II
Bob Orde, armed with a card of introduction to Fox, Welton's office
partner, left home directly after Thanksgiving. He had heard much of
Welton & Fox in the past, both from his father and his father's
associates. The firm name meant to him big things in the past history of
Michigan's industries, and big things in the vague, large life of the
Northwest. Therefore, he was considerably surprised, on finding the
firm's Adams Street offices, to observe their comparative
insignificance.
He made his way into a narrow entry, containing merely a high desk, a
safe, some letter files, and two bookkeepers. Then, without challenge,
he walked directly into a large apartment, furnished as simply, with
another safe, a typewriter, several chairs, and a large roll-top desk.
At the latter a man sprawled, reading a newspaper. Bob looked about for
a further door closed on an inner private office, where the weighty
business must be transacted. There was none. The tall, broad, lean young
man hesitated, looking about him with a puzzled expression in his
earnest young eyes. Could this be the heart and centre of those vast and
far-reaching activities he had heard so much about?
After a moment the man in the revolving chair looked up shrewdly over
his paper. Bob felt himself the object of an instant's searching
scrutiny from a pair of elderly steel-gray eyes.
"Well?" said the man, briefly.
"I am looking for Mr. Fox," explained Bob.
"I am Fox."
The young man moved forward his great frame with the easy,
loose-jointed grace of the trained athlete. Without comment he handed
his card of introduction to the seated man. The latter glanced at it,
then back to the young fellow before him.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Orde," he unbent slightly. "I've been e
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