Flannery's letter. Then he called for Miss Merrill.

She came, carrying her notebook in one hand and fixing a comb in the
back of her hair with the other.

"Take this!" said the president angrily. "Flannery, Westcote--" He
tramped back and forth, trying to condense all the bitterness that
boiled in him into telling words.

"You are a fool!" he said at length, meaning Flannery and not Miss
Merrill.

Then he thought a while. Having said that, there was not much stronger
that he could say. He had reached his climax too soon.

"Scratch that out," he said, and began walking again. He looked at
Flannery's letter and scowled.

Miss Merrill waited patiently. It gave her an opportunity to primp.

"Never mind, Miss Merrill," said the president finally. "I will call you
later." He was wondering whether he should discharge Flannery, or issue
Webster's Unabridged as General Order Number 720, or what he should do.

And Flannery went on with his letter to Mary O'Donnell, for it was a
work of several days with him. A love-letter was alone enough to worry
him, but, when he had to think of things to say and still keep one eye
on the list of three hundred words, his thoughts got away from him
before he could find whether they had to be put in simplified words or
in the good old go-as-you-please English that he usually wrote.