and sizes used in those respective shops that day. He
was supposed to post these amounts in a stock ledger against the
various sizes and styles and note the approaching shortages wherever
they came. There were between fifty and a hundred slips. The window
was open opposite his desk and a delightful breeze was curling up the
edges of some papers which had been thoughtfully weighted down. Joe
gazed, heavy lidded, through the window. An automobile, a long,
slouchy black one, went whirling by with the tonneau full of girls.
Their veils were streaming and fluttering out behind, many-hued and
flimsy. They were all gazing at the office windows as they passed.
"One might think it was a reformatory or the county workhouse or
something," he thought. He turned dully to the stack of reports and
began to count them. He felt stale--flat.

He heard his name called, and turning, saw Mr. Boner standing at the
corner of the partition looking at him over his spectacles. Mr. Boner
was a tall, heavy man with nervous twitchings and anxious eyes that
were eternally shifting about beneath their brows for something
disturbing. He was responsible for keeping the warehouse filled, the
warehouse whose books Joe kept, and it was his further duty to keep it
filled as cheaply as possible. The threat of failure in either was
what caused that eternal shifting. It was a sort of high-tension
vigilance.

Joe rose to his feet, obeying the monosyllabic summons, and followed
Mr. Boner around the partition. Mr. Boner rated a private office,
where he could worm information, trade secrets, and occasional
concessions from travelling salesmen. There was nothing social about
the place. As Joe turned the partition corner and stood in the
doorway, the old man had already seated himself at the desk. His fat
hips completely filled the chair. He was apparently staring at
something on the desk before him, but Joe could catch the occasional
shifting glimmer of his eyes at the corners and knew he was looking
at him. Suddenly Mr. Boner turned to the inner corner of the desk,
started to speak, strangled, and with difficulty recovered himself.
His voice, when finally he did recover it, was so loud that it
startled even himself, and just as suddenly he lowered it to
confidential pitch. Joe had been a witness to this procedure many
times before but it never failed to interest him. In fact, Mr. Boner
was himself a study. There was an old-fashioned golf cap perched on
the to