"Let's see: I've know you--er--nine years."

"Is it that long?" Duncan looked up from a gloomy inspection of the
interior of his demitasse, displaying his first gleam of interest in
this analysis of his character. "You are a long-suffering old duffer.
Any man who'd stand for me for nine years--"

"That'll be all of that," Kellogg cut in sharply. "I was going on to
say that you can't room with a man for four terms at college and then
know him, off and on, for five years more, pretty intimately, without
forming a pretty clear estimate of what he's worth in your own mind."

"And I don't mind telling you, Harry, I think you're the best little
business man as well as the finest sort of an all-round good-fellow on
this continent."

"Thanks awfully. I presume that's why you're determined to throw me
down just at the time you need me most.... What I was trying to get at
is the fact that I've never doubted your ultimate success for an
instant."

"You'd be a mighty lonesome minority in a congress of my employers,
Harry."

"Given the proper opportunity--"

"Hold on," Duncan interrupted. "I know just what you're going to say,
and it's all very fine, and I'm proud that you want to say it of me.
But you're dead wrong, Harry. The truth is I haven't got it in me--the
capacity to succeed. Just as much as you love work, I hate it. I ought