editor's room. As he stepped across the floor there was a little
dancing light in his eyes, there was a faint smile upon his lips,
that were quite foreign to the staid and sober Cleggett that the
world knew. He was quiet, but he was almost jaunty, too; he felt
a little drunk, and enjoyed the feeling.

He opened the managing editor's door with more assurance than he
had ever displayed before. The managing editor, a pompous, tall,
thin man with a drooping frosty mustache, and cold gray eyes in a
cold gray face that somehow reminded one of the visage of a
walrus, was preparing to go home.

"Well?" he said, shortly.

He was a man for whom Cleggett had long felt a secret antipathy.
The man was, in short, the petty tyrant of Cleggett's little
world.

"Can you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr. Wharton?" said
Cleggett. But he did not say it with the air of a person who
really sues for a hearing.

"Yes, yes--go on." Mr. Wharton, who had risen from his chair,
sat down again. He was distinctly annoyed. He was ungracious.
He was usually ungracious with Cleggett. His face set itself in
the expression it always took when he declined to consider
raising a man's salary. Cleggett, who had been refused a raise
regularly every three months for the past two years, was familiar
with the look.