Upon his son’s greeting, Dr. Surtaine whirled in his chair.

“Come down to see the old slave at work, eh?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”  Hal’s hand fell on the other’s shoulder, and the Doctor’s fingers went up to it for a quick pressure.  “I thought I’d like to see the wheels go ’round.”

“You’ve come to the right spot.  This is the good old cash-factory, and yours truly is the man behind the engine.  The State, I’m It, as Napoleon said to Louis the Quince.  Where McBeth sits is the head of the table.”

“In other words, a one-man business.”

“That’s the secret.  There’s nothing in this shop that I can’t do, and don’t do, every now and then, just to keep my hand in.  I can put more pull into an ad. to-day than the next best man in the business.  Modesty isn’t my besetting sin, you see, Hal.”

“Why should it be?  Every brick in this building would give the lie to it.”

“Say every frame on these four walls,” suggested Dr. Surtaine with an expansive gesture.

Following this indication, Hal examined the decorations.  On every side were ordinary newspaper advertisements, handsomely mounted, most of them bearing dates on brass plates.  Here and there appeared a circular, or a typed letter, similarly designated.

Above Dr. Surtaine’s desk was a triple setting, a small advertisement, a larger one, and a huge full-newspaper-page size, each embodying the same figure, that of a man half-bent over, with his hand to his back and a lamentable expression on his face.

Certain strongly typed words fairly thrust themselves out of the surrounding print:  “Pain—­Back—­Take Care—­Means Something—­Your Kidneys.”  And then in dominant presentment—­

  CERTINA
  CURES.

“What do you think of Old Lame-Boy?” asked Dr. Surtaine.

“From an aesthetic point of view?”

“Never mind the aesthetics of it.  ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’”

“What has that faded beauty done, then?”

“Carried many a thousand of our money to bank for us, Boyee.  That’s the ad. that made the business.”

“Did you design it?”

“Every word and every line, except that I got a cheap artist to touch up the drawing a little.  Then I plunged.  When that copy went out, we had just fifty thousand dollars in the world, you and I. Before it had been running three months, I’d spent one hundred thousand dollars more than we owned, in the newspapers, and had to borrow money right and left to keep the manufacturing and bottling plant up to the orders.  It was a year before we could see clear sailing, and by that time we were pretty near quarter of a million to the good.  Talk about ads. that pull!  It pulled like a mule-team and a traction engine and a fifty-cent painless dentist all in one.  I’m still using that copy, in the kidney season.”

“Do kidneys have seasons?”

“Kidney troubles do.”