“Well, you know our stenographers are pretty well crowded.  But you can leave the outline with me.  I’ll look it over,” said Mr. Guilfogle.

That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.’d the plan.  To enthusiastically—­O.  K. is an office technology for saying, gloomily, “Well, I don’t suppose it ’d hurt to try it, anyway, but for the love of Mike be careful, and let me see any letters you send out.”

So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern merchants, sending him a Dixieland Ink-well and inquiring about the crops.  He had a stenographer, an efficient intolerant young woman who wrote down his halting words as though they were examples of bad English she wanted to show her friends, and waited for the next word with cynical amusement.

“By gosh!” growled Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, “I’ll show her I’m running this.  I’ll show her she’s got another think coming.”  But he dictated so busily and was so hot to get results that he forgot the girl’s air of high-class martyrdom.

He watched the Southern baseball results in the papers.  He seized on every salesman on the Southern route as he came in, and inquired about the religion and politics of the merchants in his district.  He even forgot to worry about his next rise in salary, and found it much more exciting to rush back for an important letter after a quick lunch than to watch the time and make sure that he secured every minute of his lunch-hour.

When October came—­October of the vagabond, with the leaves brilliant out on the Palisades, and Sixth Avenue moving-picture palaces cool again and gay—­Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercury-vapor lights, making card cross-files of the Southern merchants, their hobbies and prejudices, and whistling as he worked, stopping now and then to slap the desk and mutter, “By gosh!  I’m gettin’ ’em—­gettin’ ’em.”

He rarely thought of Istra till he was out on the street again, proud of having worked so late that his eyes ached.  In fact, his chief troubles these days came when Mr. Guilfogle wouldn’t “let him put through an idea.”

Their first battle was over Mr. Wrenn’s signing the letters personally; for the letters, the office manager felt, were as much Ours as was Mr. Wrenn, and should be signed by the firm.  After some difficulty Mr. Wrenn persuaded him that one of the best ways to handle a personal letter was to make it personal.  They nearly cursed each other before Mr. Wrenn was allowed to use his own judgment.

It’s not at all certain that Mr. Guilfogle should have yielded.  What’s the use of a manager if his underlings use judgment?

The next battle Mr. Wrenn lost.  He had demanded a monthly holiday for his stenographer.  Mr. Guilfogle pointed out that she’d merely be the worse off for a holiday, that it ’d make her discontented, that it was a kindness to her to keep her mind occupied.  Mr. Wrenn was, however, granted a new typewriter, in a manner which revealed the fact that the Souvenir Company was filled with almost too much mercy in permitting an employee to follow his own selfish and stubborn desires.