He had awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and
throughout breakfast at the hustler Dairy Lunch sunshine
had flickered over the dirty tessellated floor.

He pranced up to the Souvenir Company's brick building, on
Twenty-eighth Street near Sixth Avenue. In the office he
chuckled at his ink-well and the untorn blotters on his
orderly desk. Though he sat under the weary unnatural brilliance
of a mercury-vapor light, he dashed into his work, and was too
keen about this business of living merrily to be much flustered
by the bustle of the lady buyer's superior "_Good_ morning."
Even up to ten-thirty he was still slamming down papers on
his desk. Just let any one try to stop his course, his readiness
for snapping fingers at The Job; just let them _try_ it, that was
all he wanted!

Then he was shot out of his chair and four feet along the
corridor, in reflex response to the surly "Bur-r-r-r-r" of
the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager, desired
to see him. He scampered along the corridor and slid
decorously through the manager's doorway into the long sun-bright
room, ornate with rugs and souvenirs. Seven Novelties glittered
on the desk alone, including a large rococo Shakespeare-style
glass ink-well containing cloves and a small iron Pittsburg-style
one containing ink. Mr. Wrenn blinked like a noon-roused owlet
in the brilliance. The manager dropped his fist on the desk,
glared, smoothed his flowered prairie of waistcoat, and growled,
his red jowls quivering:

"Look here, Wrenn, what's the matter with you? The Bronx