from the curb. "Poor old fella. What you thinking about?
Want to be a circus horse and wander? Le's beat it together.
You can't, eh? Poor old fella!"

At three-thirty, the time when it seems to office persons that
the day's work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was
shaky about his duty to the firm. He was more so after an
electrical interview with the manager, who spent a few minutes,
which he happened to have free, in roaring "I want to know why"
at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular "why" that he wanted to
know; he was merely getting scientific efficiency out of
employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken from a
business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories for
inefficient employers.

At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on
nothing in particular, and suggested that he stay late with
Charley Carpenter and the stock-keeper to inventory a line of
desk-clocks which they were closing out.

As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the
corridor and coveted the bright late afternoon. The cornices of
lofty buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the
glass-inclosed layer-like upper floors. He wanted to be out
there in the streets with the shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle
didn't consider him; why should he consider the firm?