finds fault with everything I do, and fines me for being a little late
mornings."

I takes a long breath and swallows hard. Next I tries to strike the
saintly pose, and then I unreels the copybook dope just like I believed
it myself.

"He does, eh?" says I. "Then beat him to it. Don't be late. Show up
at eight-thirty instead of nine. That extra half-hour ain't goin' to
kill you. Be the last to quit too. Play up to Miller. Do things the
way he wants 'em done, even if you have to do 'em over a dozen times.
And use your bean."

"But it's petty, insignificant work," says Mortimer.

"All the worse for you if you can't swing it," says I. "See here,
now--how are you goin' to feel afterwards if you've always got to look
back on the fact that you begun by fallin' down on a twelve-dollar job?"

Must have got Mortimer in the short ribs, that last shot; for he walks
all the rest of the way back to the Corrugated without sayin' a word.
Then, just as we gets into the elevator, he unloosens.

"I don't believe it will do any good to try," says he; "but I've a mind
to give it a whirl."

I didn't say so, but that was the first thing we'd agreed on that day.
So that night I has to send off a report which reads like this: