“What does the guaranty mean?”

“That whatever statement may be on the label is accurate.  That’s all.  But the public takes it to mean that the Government officially guarantees Certina to do everything we claim for it,” chuckled Dr. Surtaine.  “It’s a great card.  We’ve done more business under the new formula than we ever did under the old.”

“What is the formula now?”

“Prying into the secrets of the trade?” chuckled the elder man.

“But if I’m coming into the shop, to learn—­”

“Right you are, Boyee,” interrupted his father buoyantly.  “There’s the formula for making profits.”  He swept his hand about in a spacious circle, grandly indicating the advertisement-bedecked walls.  “There’s where the brains count.  Come along,” he added, jumping up; “let’s take a turn around the joint.”

Every day, Dr. Surtaine explained to his son, he made it a practice to go through the entire plant.

“It’s the only way to keep a business up to mark.  Besides, I like to know my people.”

Evidently he did know his people and his people knew and strongly liked him.  So much Hal gathered from the offhand and cheerily friendly greetings which were exchanged between the head of the vast concern and such employees, important or humble, as they chanced to meet in their wanderings.  First they went to the printing-plant, the Certina Company doing all its own printing; then to what Dr. Surtaine called “the literary bureau.”

“Three men get out all our circulars and advertising copy,” he explained in an aside.  “One of ’em gets five thousand a year; but even so I have to go over all his stuff.  If I could teach him to write ads. like I do it myself, I’d pay him ten thousand—­yes, twenty thousand.  I’d have to, to keep him.  The circulars they do better; but I edit those, too.  What about that name for the new laxative pills, Con?  Hal, I want you to meet Mr. Conover, our chief ad.-man.”

Conover, a dapper young man with heavy eye-glasses, greeted Hal with some interest, and then turned to the business in hand.

“What’d you think of ’Anti-Pellets’?” he asked.  “Anti, opposed to, you know.  In the sub-line, tell what they’re opposed to:  indigestion, appendicitis, and so on.”

“Don’t like it,” returned Dr. Surtaine abruptly.  “Anti-Ralgia’s played that to death.  Lemme think, for a moment.”

Down he plumped into Conover’s chair, seized a pencil and made tentative jabs at a sheet of paper.  “Pellets, pellets,” he muttered.  Then, in a kind of subdued roar, “I’ve got it!  I’ve got it, Con!  ‘Pro-Pellets.’  Tell people what they’re for, not what they’re against.  Besides, the name has got the idea of pro-pulsion.  See?  Pro-Pellets, pro-pel!” His big fist shot forward like a piston-rod.  “Just the idea for a laxative.  Eh?”

“Fine!” agreed Conover, a little ruefully, but with genuine appreciation of the fitness of the name.  “I wish I’d thought of it.”