want of me?"

"Keep your hands off the boy."

"Didn't I offer fair and square to match you for his soul? You insisted
on fight."

"If you'd just let him alone," pursued the quack, "he'd come around
right side up with care. He's sound and sensible at bottom. He's got a
lot of me in him. But you keep feeding him up on your yellow journal
ideas. What'll they ever get him? Trouble; nothing but trouble. Even if
you should make a sort of success of the paper with your wild
sensationalism it wouldn't be any real good to Hal. It wouldn't get him
anywhere with the real people. It'd be a sheet he'd always have to be a
little ashamed of. I tell you what, Mac, in order to respect himself a
man has got to respect his business."

"Just so," said McGuire Ellis. "Do you respect your business, Doc?"

"Do I!! It makes half a million a year clear profit."

The associate editor turned to his work whistling softly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ROOKERIES

Two conspicuous ornaments of Worthington's upper world visited
Worthington's underworld on a hot, misty morning of early June. Both
were there on business, Dr. L. Andre Surtaine in the fulfillment of his
agreement with his son--the exact purpose of the visit, by the way,
would have inspired Harrington Surtaine with unpleasant surprise, could
he have known it; and Miss Esme Elliot on a tour of inspection for the
Visiting Nurses' Association, of which she was an energetic official.
Whatever faults or foibles might be ascribed to Miss Elliot, she was no
faddist. That which she undertook to do, she did thoroughly and well;
and for practical hygiene she possessed an inborn liking and aptitude,
far more so than, for example, her fortuitous fellow slummer of the
morning, Dr. Surtaine, whom she encountered at the corner where the
Rookeries begin. The eminent savant removed his hat with a fine
flourish, further reflected in his language as he said:--

"What does Beauty so far afield?"

"Thank you, if you mean me," said Esme demurely.

"Do you see something else around here that answers the description?"

"No: I certainly don't," she replied, letting her eyes wander along the
street where Sadler's Shacks rose in grime and gauntness to offend the
clean skies. "I am going over there to see some sick people."

"Ah! Charity as well as Beauty; the perfect combination."

The Doctor's pomposity always amused Esme. "And what does Science so far
from its placid haunts?" she mocked. "Are you sc