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derstanding. Why, even today I heard some one ask why the Red Cross had to carry on any more! The way the people responded to the war demands was magnificent; their failure to recognize the aftermath is disgraceful. I've wanted to go right back to France, Barry, where people understand!"

"I'm glad you didn't, Miss Lola," he said soberly; "but I suppose that's selfish, too. You and my wooden leg have made a man out of me, and there are lots of us boys here in Norcross who think you ought to have a colored glass window in the church; but of course in France you could have helped a lot more fellers like us. We're all selfish, Miss Lola, when it comes right down to ourselves, aren't we?"

"If it

"No, Barry, . ." she said emphatically. hadn't been for you and the other boys, I should have gone back, but the fact that you needed me helped me to forget my disappointment. What you boys have done for me has been far more than anything I could ever do for you, but you don't need me now, and I'm wondering.

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"The Capt'n needs you . . . " he said unexpectedly. Lola looked at him quickly. Her protegé was rapidly acquiring intuition.

"I don't believe he does, Barry," she replied quietly. "I think he has found himself now in his work with the men."

"But that never takes the place of what a woman can do, Miss Lola. I was just talkin' with the Capt'n.

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Lola's sudden look interrupted him.

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed with quick comprehension; "you know I wouldn't speak of what we talked about. But we did speak of you just casual like, . . and say... the Capt'n sure does think a heap of you!" "I hope so, Barry," Lola said simply, holding out

her hand.

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Barry seized it eagerly, and an expression came into his face which Lola had never seen there before.

"That's nothin' strange," he added in a low voice. "Any man who didn't would be blind in both eyes and wooden all over."

CHAPTER XIII

W

I

HENEVER James Norton's emotions were affected, his immediate reaction was to plunge more furiously into his work. Lately he had experienced a series of emotional shocks, and as a result his activities were correspondingly abnormal. His office hours, longer than those of any other employee of the Company, were crowded with hectic routine, which present-day executives delegate to subordinates. A manager in another business, who made the statement in his hearing that for a highly-paid executive to do any work which could be performed by one drawing a smaller salary was a waste of the company's money, incurred Norton's instant distrust. Except for his tremendous dynamic power, he could never have met the demands of his position with his days so clogged by minor details. As it was, the physical effort required to drive the machine over an uncharted route so pulled upon his vitality that, had he realized it, his capacity was needlessly impaired.

Norton had always done this. It was his idea of work, and he considered the modern notion that vacations and occasional afternoons at golf made a man more valuable to his business was the specious invention

of sloths and idlers. His favorite boast was that he had never taken a vacation, and he failed to observe, so gradual came the transition in public opinion, that the earlier expression of wonder and approval on the part of his hearers was now rather that of pity or surprise.

"The world has gone crazy," he would tell Treadway, when his secretary reported that the head of some concern was "out of town" or "away on a vacation." "How they keep things going is beyond my understanding. They don't, that's all," he would say conclusively; "other people, who aren't afraid to work, are holding down their jobs for them. That's the answer I don't see how they get away with it."

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Now the office hours extended into the evening, and James Norton might be found at his desk in his library at home, carrying on the routine of his work with nothing changed but the surroundings. This was a trial to Treadway, for when his master's idiosyncracies deprived him of his own leisure for relaxation his enthusiastic approval of the Norton idea became somewhat modified. But it still served Treadway's purpose to play close to James Norton, so he uncomplainingly sacrificed whatever of his personal time was demanded, charging it off to profit and loss.

"All this is having a demoralizing influence on the younger men," Norton declared one evening when feeling particularly resentful . . . "they're getting where they think that anything to do with honest labor contaminates them. They'd rather talk about life being a representation of art and all that sort of thing."

"Don't you think that is a phase which disappears after experience teaches them what they are really up against ?"

"Yes, I do," the older man admitted; "but that doesn't keep it from being an additional obstacle to overcome in driving common-sense ideas into their heads . . . and there were obstacles enough before."

Treadway was delighted to match his mind against the master's, for such opportunities came but seldom. Norton rarely argued . . . usually he told him. The secretary's retentive mind supplied material absorbed from a recent lecture, but easily made his own for the purpose of the present discussion.

"Yet we must admit the value of leisure to our civilization," he contended, assuming the attitude of an oracle. "Leisure produces culture, and culture has interpreted man to man; it has explored the mind and rediscovered past explorations; it has developed scientists as well as artists, whose contribution to civilization has been to lay the foundation upon which were built the colossal minds which conceived the machines that rule the commercial world today."

Norton listened, highly amused.

"Who told you all that, Treadway? It sounds to me like a Lowell lecture . . . You expect me to disagree with you, but I don't. Everything you have just quoted is correct, but it stops short of facts. Always beware of half-truths, Treadway, . . they're dangerous . . . Of course culture has played its part, but what could it have accomplished without commerce? It has been commercialism that has applied the wisdom

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