The Clarion

CHAPTER IV

THE SHOP

Certi­na had found its first mod­est home in Wor­thing­ton on a side street. As the busi­ness grew, the staid ten­ement which housed it ex­pand­ed and drew to it­self neigh­bor­ing build­ings, un­til it even­tu­al­ly gave way to the largest, finest, and most up-​to-​date of­fice ed­ifice in the city. None too large, fine, or mod­ern was this last word in ar­chi­tec­ture for the tri­umphant nos­trum and the mi­nor med­ical en­ter­pris­es al­lied to it. For though Certi­na alone bore the name and spread the fame and fea­tures of its in­ven­tor abroad in the land, many less­er ex­per­iments had bloomed in­to suc­cess un­der the fer­til­iz­ing ge­nius of the mas­ter-​quack.

Inan­imate ma­chin­ery, when it runs sweet­ly, gives forth a def­inite tone, the bee-​song of work hap­pi­ly con­sum­mat­ed. So this great hu­man mech­anism seemed, to Har­ring­ton Sur­taine as he en­tered the realm of its ac­tiv­ities, mov­ing to mu­sic per­son­al to it­self. Through its wide halls he wan­dered, past hum­ming work­rooms, up spa­cious stair­ways, res­onant to the tread of brisk feet, un­til he reached the fifth floor where clus­ter the main of­fices. Here through a suc­ces­sion of open doors he caught a glimpse of the en­gi­neer who con­trolled all these live­ly pro­cess­es, lean­ing eas­ily back from his desk, fresh, suave­ly groomed, smil­ing, an em­bod­iment of per­fect sat­is­fac­tion. Be­fore Dr. Sur­taine lay many sheaves of pa­per, in rigid or­der. A stenog­ra­pher sat in a far cor­ner, mak­ing notes. From be­yond a side door came the pre­cise, faint click­ing of a type­writ­er. The room pos­sessed an at­mo­sphere of calm and poise; but not of rest­ful­ness. At once and em­phat­ical­ly it im­pressed the vis­itor with a sense that it was a place where things were done, and done ef­fi­cient­ly.

Up­on his son's greet­ing, Dr. Sur­taine whirled in his chair.

“Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Hal's hand fell on the oth­er's shoul­der, and the Doc­tor's fin­gers went up to it for a quick pres­sure. “I thought I'd like to see the wheels go 'round.”

“You've come to the right spot. This is the good old cash-​fac­to­ry, and yours tru­ly is the man be­hind the en­gine. The State, I'm It, as Napoleon said to Louis the Quince. Where Mc­Beth sits is the head of the ta­ble.”

“In oth­er words, a one-​man busi­ness.”

“That's the se­cret. There's noth­ing in this shop that I can't do, and don't do, ev­ery now and then, just to keep my hand in. I can put more pull in­to an ad. to-​day than the next best man in the busi­ness. Mod­esty isn't my be­set­ting sin, you see, Hal.”

“Why should it be? Ev­ery brick in this build­ing would give the lie to it.”

“Say ev­ery frame on these four walls,” sug­gest­ed Dr. Sur­taine with an ex­pan­sive ges­ture.

Fol­low­ing this in­di­ca­tion, Hal ex­am­ined the dec­ora­tions. On ev­ery side were or­di­nary news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments, hand­some­ly mount­ed, most of them bear­ing dates on brass plates. Here and there ap­peared a cir­cu­lar, or a typed let­ter, sim­ilar­ly des­ig­nat­ed.

Above Dr. Sur­taine's desk was a triple set­ting, a small ad­ver­tise­ment, a larg­er one, and a huge full-​news­pa­per-​page size, each em­body­ing the same fig­ure, that of a man half-​bent over, with his hand to his back and a lamentable ex­pres­sion on his face.

Cer­tain strong­ly typed words fair­ly thrust them­selves out of the sur­round­ing print: “Pain--Back--Take Care--Means Some­thing--Your Kid­neys.” And then in dom­inant pre­sent­ment--

CERTI­NA CURES.

“What do you think of Old Lame-​Boy?” asked Dr. Sur­taine.

“From an æs­thet­ic point of view?”

“Nev­er mind the æs­thet­ics of it. 'Hand­some is as hand­some does.'”

“What has that fad­ed beau­ty done, then?”

“Car­ried many a thou­sand of our mon­ey to bank for us, Boy­ee. That's the ad. that made the busi­ness.”

“Did you de­sign it?”

“Ev­ery word and ev­ery line, ex­cept that I got a cheap artist to touch up the draw­ing a lit­tle. Then I plunged. When that copy went out, we had just fifty thou­sand dol­lars in the world, you and I. Be­fore it had been run­ning three months, I'd spent one hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars more than we owned, in the news­pa­pers, and had to bor­row mon­ey right and left to keep the man­ufac­tur­ing and bot­tling plant up to the or­ders. It was a year be­fore we could see clear sail­ing, and by that time we were pret­ty near quar­ter of a mil­lion to the good. Talk about ads. that pull! It pulled like a mule-​team and a trac­tion en­gine and a fifty-​cent pain­less den­tist all in one. I'm still us­ing that copy, in the kid­ney sea­son.”

“Do kid­neys have sea­sons?”

“Kid­ney trou­bles do.”

“I'd have thought such dis­eases wouldn't de­pend on the time of year.”

“Maybe they don't, ac­tu­al­ly,” ad­mit­ted the oth­er. “Maybe they're just crowd­ed out of the pub­lic mind by the pres­sure of oth­er sick­ness in sea­son, like rheuma­tism in the ear­ly win­ter, and pneu­mo­nia in the late. But there's no doubt that the kid­ney sea­son comes in with the changes of the spring. That's one of my dis­cov­er­ies, too. I tell you, Boy­ee, I've built my suc­cess on things like that. It's psy­chol­ogy: that's what it is. That's what you've got to learn, if you're go­ing in­to the con­cern.”

“I'm ready, Dad. It sounds in­ter­est­ing. More so than I'd have thought.”

“In­ter­est­ing! It's the very heart and core of the trade.” Dr. Sur­taine leaned for­ward, to tap with an earnest fin­ger on his son's knee, a pic­ture of ex­pos­ito­ry en­thu­si­asm. “Here's the the­ory. You see, along about March or April peo­ple be­gin to get slack-​nerved and out-​of-​sort­sy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's some­thing. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em won­der­ing if it isn't their kid­neys. Af­ter won­der comes wor­ry. He's the best lit­tle wor­ri­er in the trade, Old Lame-​Boy is. He just pesters folks in­to tak­ing prop­er care of them­selves. They get Certi­na, and we get their dol­lars. And they get their mon­ey's worth, too,” he added as an af­terthought for Hal's ben­efit, “for it's a mighty good thing to have your kid­neys ton­icked up at this time of year.”

“But, Dad,” queried Hal, with an ef­fort of puz­zled rem­inis­cence, “in the old days Certi­na wasn't a kid­ney rem­edy, was it?”

“Not spe­cial­ly. It's al­ways been _good_ for the kid­neys. Good for ev­ery­thing, for that mat­ter. Be­sides, the for­mu­la's been changed.”

“Changed? But the for­mu­la's the vi­tal thing, isn't it?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Cer­tain­ly it's the vi­tal thing: cer­tain­ly. But, you see,--well,--new dis­cov­er­ies in medicine and that sort of thing.”

“You've put new drugs in?”

“Yes: I've done that. Buchu, for in­stance. That's sup­posed to be good for the kid­neys. Dropped some things out, too. Mor­phine got sort of a bad name. The muck­rak­ers did that with their mag­azine ar­ti­cles.”

“Of course I don't pre­tend to know about such things, Dad. But mor­phine seems a pret­ty dan­ger­ous thing for peo­ple to take in­dis­crim­inate­ly.”

“Well, it's out. There ain't a grain of it in Certi­na to-​day.”

“I'm glad of it.”

“Oh, I don't know. It's use­ful in its place. For in­stance, you can't run a sooth­ing-​syrup with­out it. But when the Pure Food Law com­pelled us to print the amount of mor­phine on the la­bel, I just made up my mind that I'd have no gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence in the Certi­na busi­ness, so I dropped the drug.”

“Did the law hurt our trade much?”

“Not so far as Certi­na goes. I'm not even sure it didn't help. You see, now we can print 'Guar­an­teed un­der the U.S. Food and Drugs Act' on ev­ery bot­tle. In fact we're re­quired to.”

“What does the guar­an­ty mean?”

“That what­ev­er state­ment may be on the la­bel is ac­cu­rate. That's all. But the pub­lic takes it to mean that the Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial­ly guar­an­tees Certi­na to do ev­ery­thing we claim for it,” chuck­led Dr. Sur­taine. “It's a great card. We've done more busi­ness un­der the new for­mu­la than we ev­er did un­der the old.”

“What is the for­mu­la now?”

“Pry­ing in­to the se­crets of the trade?” chuck­led the el­der man.

“But if I'm com­ing in­to the shop, to learn--”

“Right you are, Boy­ee,” in­ter­rupt­ed his fa­ther buoy­ant­ly. “There's the for­mu­la for mak­ing prof­its.” He swept his hand about in a spa­cious cir­cle, grand­ly in­di­cat­ing the ad­ver­tise­ment-​be­decked walls. “There's where the brains count. Come along,” he added, jump­ing up; “let's take a turn around the joint.”

Ev­ery day, Dr. Sur­taine ex­plained to his son, he made it a prac­tice to go through the en­tire plant.

“It's the on­ly way to keep a busi­ness up to mark. Be­sides, I like to know my peo­ple.”

Ev­ident­ly he did know his peo­ple and his peo­ple knew and strong­ly liked him. So much Hal gath­ered from the off­hand and cheer­ily friend­ly greet­ings which were ex­changed be­tween the head of the vast con­cern and such em­ploy­ees, im­por­tant or hum­ble, as they chanced to meet in their wan­der­ings. First they went to the print­ing-​plant, the Certi­na Com­pa­ny do­ing all its own print­ing; then to what Dr. Sur­taine called “the lit­er­ary bu­reau.”

“Three men get out all our cir­cu­lars and ad­ver­tis­ing copy,” he ex­plained in an aside. “One of 'em gets five thou­sand a year; but even so I have to go over all his stuff. If I could teach him to write ads. like I do it my­self, I'd pay him ten thou­sand--yes, twen­ty thou­sand. I'd have to, to keep him. The cir­cu­lars they do bet­ter; but I ed­it those, too. What about that name for the new lax­ative pills, Con? Hal, I want you to meet Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man.”

Conover, a dap­per young man with heavy eye-​glass­es, greet­ed Hal with some in­ter­est, and then turned to the busi­ness in hand.

“What'd you think of 'An­ti-​Pel­lets'?” he asked. “An­ti, op­posed to, you know. In the sub-​line, tell what they're op­posed to: in­di­ges­tion, ap­pen­dici­tis, and so on.”

“Don't like it,” re­turned Dr. Sur­taine abrupt­ly. “An­ti-​Ral­gia's played that to death. Lemme think, for a mo­ment.”

Down he plumped in­to Conover's chair, seized a pen­cil and made ten­ta­tive jabs at a sheet of pa­per. “Pel­lets, pel­lets,” he mut­tered. Then, in a kind of sub­dued roar, “I've got it! I've got it, Con! 'Pro-​Pel­lets.' Tell peo­ple what they're for, not what they're against. Be­sides, the name has got the idea of pro-​pul­sion. See? Pro-​Pel­lets, pro-​pel!” His big fist shot for­ward like a pis­ton-​rod. “Just the idea for a lax­ative. Eh?”

“Fine!” agreed Conover, a lit­tle rue­ful­ly, but with gen­uine ap­pre­ci­ation of the fit­ness of the name. “I wish I'd thought of it.”

“You did--pret­ty near. Any­way, you made me think of it. An­ti-​Pel­lets, Pro-​Pel­lets: it's just one step. Like as not you'd have seen it your­self if I hadn't but­ted in. Now, go to it, and fig­ure out your se­ries on that.”

With kind­ly hands he pushed Conover back in­to his chair, gave him a hearty pat on the shoul­der, and passed on. Hal be­gan to have an inkling of the rea­sons for his fa­ther's pop­ular­ity.

“Have we got oth­er medicines be­sides Certi­na?” he asked.

“Bless you, yes! This lit­tle lax­ative pills busi­ness I took over from a con­cern that didn't have the cap­ital to ad­ver­tise it. Across the hall there is the Sure Soother de­part­ment. That's a teething syrup: does won­ders for rest­less ba­bies. On the floor be­low is the Cran­icure Mix­ture for headaches, Rub-​it-​in Balm for rheuma­tism and bruis­es, and a cou­ple of small side is­sues that we're not try­ing to push much. We're han­dling Stom­achine and Re­lief Pills from here, but the pills are made in Cincin­nati, and we mar­ket 'em un­der an­oth­er trade name.”

“Stom­achine is for stom­ach trou­bles, I as­sume,” said Hal. “What are the Re­lief Pills?”

“Oh, a fe­male rem­edy,” replied his fa­ther care­less­ly. “Quite a boom­ing lit­tle trade, too. Take a look at the Certi­na col­lec­tion of tes­ti­mo­ni­als.”

In a room like a bank vault were great mass­es of tes­ti­mo­ni­al let­ters, all list­ed and dou­ble-​cat­alogued by name and by dis­ease.

“Gen­uine. Prov­ably gen­uine, ev­ery one. There's ro­mance in some of 'em. And grat­itude; good Lord! Some­times when I look 'em over, I won­der I don't run for Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States on a Certi­na plat­form.”

From the tes­ti­mo­ni­al room they went to the art de­part­ment where Dr. Sur­taine had some sug­ges­tions to make as to bill-​board de­signs.

“You'll nev­er get an­oth­er puller like Old Lame-​Boy,” Hal heard the head de­sign­er say with a chuck­le, and his fa­ther re­ply: “If I could I'd start an­oth­er pro­pri­etary as big as Certi­na.”

“Where does that lead to?” in­quired Hal, as they ap­proached a side pas­sage slop­ing slight­ly down, and barred by a steel door.

“The old build­ing. The man­ufac­tur­ing de­part­ment is over there.”

“Com­pound­ing the medicine, you mean?”

“Yes. Bot­tling and ship­ping, too.”

“Aren't we go­ing through?”

“Why, yes: if you like. You won't find much to in­ter­est you, though.”

Nor, to Hal's sur­prise, did Dr. Sur­taine him­self seem much con­cerned with this phase of the busi­ness. Ap­par­ent­ly his hand was not so close in con­trol here as in the oth­er build­ing. The men seemed to know him less well.

“All this pret­ty well runs it­self,” he ex­plained neg­li­gent­ly.

“Don't you have to keep a check on the mix­ing, to make sure it's right?”

“Oh, they fol­low the for­mu­la. No chance for er­ror.”

They walked amidst chink­ing trucks, some filled with emp­ty, some with filled and la­beled bot­tles, un­til they reached the car­ton room where scores of girls were busi­ly in­sert­ing the bot­tles, to­geth­er with fold­ed cir­cu­lars and ad­ver­tis­ing cards, in­to paste­board box­es. At the far end of this room a pun­gent, high-​spiced scent, as of a pick­le-​kitchen with a for­ti­fied odor un­der­ly­ing it, greet­ed the un­ac­cus­tomed nose of the neo­phyte.

“Good!” he sniffed. “How clean and ap­pe­tiz­ing it smells!”

En­thu­si­asm warmed the big man's voice once more.

“Just what it is, too!” he ex­claimed. “Now you've hit on the sec­ond big point in Certi­na's suc­cess. It's easy to take. What's the worst thing about doc­tors' dos­es? They're nasty. The very thought of 'em would gag a cat. Tell peo­ple that here's a rem­edy bet­ter than the old medicine and pleas­ant to the taste, and they'll take to it like ducks to wa­ter. Certi­na is the first pro­pri­etary that ev­er tast­ed good. Next to Old Lame-​Boy, it's my biggest idea.”

“Are we go­ing in­to the mix­ing-​room?” asked his son.

“If you like. But you'll see less than you smell.”

So it proved. A heavy, wet, rich va­por shroud­ed the space about a huge caul­dron, from which came a sound of steady plash­ing. Present­ly an at­ten­dant gnome, stripped to the waist, ap­peared, nod­ded to Dr. Sur­taine, called to some one back in the mist, and short­ly brought Hal a small glass brim­ming with a pale-​brown liq­uid.

“Just fresh,” he said. “Try it.”

“My kid­neys are all right,” protest­ed Hal. “I don't need any medicine.”

“Take it for a brac­er. It won't hurt you,” urged the gnome.

Hal looked at his fa­ther, and, at his nod, put his lips to the glass.

“Why, it tastes like spiced whiskey!” he cried.

“Not so far out of the way. Columbian spir­its, caramel, cin­na­mon and car­damom, and a touch of the buchu. Good for the blues. Fin­ish it.”

Hal did so and was aware of an al­most in­stan­ta­neous glow.

“Strong stuff, sir,” he said to his fa­ther as they emerged in­to a clear­er at­mo­sphere.

“They like it strong,” replied the oth­er curt­ly. “I give 'em what they like.”

The at­ten­dant gnome fol­lowed. “Mr. Dixon was look­ing for you, Dr. Sur­taine. Here he comes, now.”

“Dixon's our chief chemist,” ex­plained Dr. Sur­taine as a shab­by, anx­ious-​look­ing man am­bled for­ward.

“We're hav­ing trou­ble with that last lot of cas­cara, sir,” said he lugubri­ous­ly.

“In the Num­ber Four?”

“Yes, sir. It don't seem to have any strength.”

“Sub­sti­tute sen­na.” So off­hand was the tone that it sound­ed like a sug­ges­tion rather than an or­der.

As the lat­ter, how­ev­er, the chemist con­tent­ed­ly took it.

“It'll cost less,” he ob­served; “and I guess it'll do the work just as well.”

To Hal it seemed a some­what cav­alier method of al­ter­ing a med­ical for­mu­la. But his mind, ac­cus­tomed to easy ac­cep­tance of the busi­ness which so lux­uri­ous­ly sup­plied his wants, passed the mat­ter over light­ly.

“First-​rate man, Dixon,” re­marked Dr. Sur­taine as they passed along. “Col­lege-​bred, and all that. Boozes, though. I on­ly pay him twen­ty-​five a week, and he's mighty glad to get it.”

On the way back to the of­fices, they tra­versed the check­ing and ac­count­ing rooms, the agen­cy de­part­ment, the great rows of desks where­at the ship­ping and mail­ing were looked af­ter, and at length stopped be­fore the door of a small of­fice oc­cu­pied by a dozen wom­en. One of these, a full-​bo­somed, slen­der, warm-​skinned girl with a wealth of deep-​hued, rip­pling red hair crown­ing her small, well-​poised head, rose and came to speak to Dr. Sur­taine.

“Did you get the mes­sage I sent you about Let­ter Num­ber Sev­en?” she asked.

“Hel­lo, Mil­ly,” greet­ed the pre­sid­ing ge­nius, pleas­ant­ly. “Just what was that about Num­ber Sev­en?”

“It isn't get­ting re­sults.”

“No? Let's see it.” Dr. Sur­taine was as in­ter­est­ed in this as he had been ca­su­al about the drug al­ter­ation.

“I don't think it's per­son­al enough,” pur­sued the girl, hand­ing him a sheet of im­ita­tion type­writ­er print.

“Oh, you don't,” said her em­ploy­er, amused. “Maybe you could bet­ter it.”

“I have,” said the girl calm­ly. “You al­ways tell us to make sug­ges­tions. Mine are on the back of the pa­per.”

“Good for you! Hal, here's the pret­ti­est girl in the shop, and about the smartest. Mil­ly, this is my boy.”

The girl looked up at Hal with a smile and bright­ened col­or. He was sud­den­ly in­ter­est­ed and ap­pre­cia­tive to see to what a vivid pret­ti­ness her face was light­ed by the raised glance of her swift, gray-​green eyes.

“Are you com­ing in­to the busi­ness, Mr. Sur­taine?” she asked com­pos­ed­ly, and with al­most as pro­pri­etary an air as if she had said “our busi­ness.”

“I don't know. Is it the sort of busi­ness you would ad­vise a rather lazy per­son to em­bark in, Miss--”

“Neal,” she sup­plied; adding, with an il­lus­tra­tive glance around, up­on her busy room­ful, all sort­ing and mark­ing cor­re­spon­dence, “You see, I on­ly give ad­vice by let­ter.”

She turned away to an­swer one of the sub­or­di­nates, and, at the same time, Dr. Sur­taine was called aside by a man with a ship­ping-​bill. Look­ing down the line of work­ers, Hal saw that each one was sim­ply open­ing, read­ing, and mark­ing with a sin­gle stroke, the let­ters from a dis­tribut­ing groove. To her ques­tion­er Mil­ly Neal was say­ing, briskly:

“That's Three and Sev­en. Can't you see, she says she has spots be­fore her eyes. That's stom­ach. And the lame­ness in the side is kid­neys. Mark it 'Three pass to Sev­en.' There's a com­bi­na­tion form for that.”

“What branch of the work is this?” asked Hal, as she lift­ed her eyes to his again.

“Symp­tom cor­re­spon­dence. This is the sort­ing-​room.”

“Please ex­plain. I'm a per­fect green­horn, you know.”

“You've seen the ads. of course. No­body could help see­ing them. They all say, 'Write to Pro­fes­sor Cer­tain'--the trade name, you know. It's the reg­ular stock line, but it does bring in the queries. Here's the af­ter­noon mail, now.”

Hun­dreds up­on hun­dreds of let­ters came tum­bling from a bag up­on the re­ceiv­ing-​ta­ble. All were ad­dressed to “Prof.” or “Dr.” Cer­tain.

“How can my fa­ther hope to an­swer all those?” cried Hal.

The girl sur­veyed him with a quaint and de­li­cious de­ri­sion. “He? You don't sup­pose he ev­er sees them! What are _we_ here for?”

“You do the an­swer­ing?”

“Prac­ti­cal­ly all of it, by form-​let­ters turned out in the print­ing de­part­ment. For in­stance, Let­ter One is coughs and colds; Two, headaches; Three, stom­ach; and so on. As soon as a symp-​let­ter is read the girl marks it with the form-​let­ter num­ber, un­der­scores the ad­dress, and it goes across to the let­ter room where the right an­swer is mailed, ad­vis­ing the prospect to take Certi­na. Or­ders with cash go di­rect to the ship­ping de­part­ment. If the symp-​writ­er wants per­son­al ad­vice that the form-​let­ters don't give, I send the in­quiry up­stairs to Dr. De Vi­to. He's a reg­ular grad­uate physi­cian who puts in half his time as our Med­ical Ad­vis­er. We can clear up three thou­sand let­ters a day, here.”

“I can read­ily see that my fa­ther couldn't at­tend to them per­son­al­ly,” said Hal, smil­ing.

“And it's just as good this way. Certi­na is what the prospects want and need. It makes no dif­fer­ence who pre­scribes it. This is the Chief's own de­vice for han­dling the cor­re­spon­dence.”

“The Chief?”

“Your fa­ther. We all call him that, all the old hands.”

Hal's glance skimmed over the fresh young face, and the bril­liant eyes. “You wouldn't call your­self a very old hand, Miss Neal.”

“Sev­en years I've worked for the Chief, and I nev­er want to work in a bet­ter place. He's been more than good to me.”

“Be­cause you've de­served it, young wom­an,” came the Doc­tor's voice from be­hind Hal. “That's the one and on­ly rea­son. I'm a flint-​liv­ered old divvle to folks that don't earn ev­ery cent of their wages.”

“Don't you be­lieve him, Mr. Sur­taine,” con­tro­vert­ed the girl, earnest­ly. “When one of my girls came down last year with tu­ber--”

“Whoof! Whoof! Whoof!” in­ter­rupt­ed the big man, wav­ing his hands in the air. “Stop it! This is no ex­pe­ri­ence meet­ing. Mil­ly, you're right about this let­ter. It's the con­fi­den­tial note that's lack­ing. It'll work up all right along the line of your sug­ges­tion. I'll have to send Hal to you for lessons in the busi­ness.”

“Miss Neal would have to be very pa­tient with my stu­pid­ity.”

“I don't think it would be hard to be pa­tient with you,” she said soft­ly; and though her look was steady he saw the full col­or rise in her cheeks, and, star­tled, felt an an­swer­ing throb in his puls­es.

“But you mustn't flirt with her, Hal,” warned the old quack, with a jovi­al­ity that jarred.

Un­com­fort­ably con­scious of him­self and of the girl's al­tered ex­pres­sion, Hal spoke a hasty word or two of farewell, and fol­lowed his fa­ther out in­to the hall­way. But the blithe and vivid fem­inin­ity of the young ex­pert plucked at his mind. At the bend of the hall, he turned with half a hope and saw her stand­ing at the door. Her look was up­on him, and it seemed to him to be both trou­bled and wist­ful.