“Do you think I wouldn’t be amenable to your stern discipline?”

Still she refused to meet him on his ground of badinage.  “It isn’t that.  But I don’t think you’d be interested enough to start in at the bottom and work up.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Miss Neal,” said Hal, a little startled by the acuteness of her judgment, and a little piqued as well.  “Though you condemn me to a life of uselessness on scant evidence.”

She went scarlet.  “Oh, please!  You know I didn’t mean that.  But you seem too—­too easy-going, too—­”

“Too ornamental to be useful?”

Suddenly she stamped her foot at him, flaming into a swift exasperation.  “You’re laughing at me!” she accused.  “I’m going back to my work.  I won’t stay and be made fun of.”  Then, in another and rather a dismayed tone, “Oh, I’m forgetting about your being the Chief’s son.”

Hal jumped to his feet.  “Please promise to forget it when next we meet,” he besought her with winning courtesy.  “You’ve been a kind little friend and adviser.  And I thank you for what you have said.”

“Not at all,” she returned lamely, and walked away, her face still crimson.

Returning to the executive suite, the young scion found his father immersed in technicalities of copy with the second advertising writer.

“Sit down, Boyee,” said he.  “I’ll be through in a few minutes.”  And he resumed his discussion of “black-face,” “36-point,” “indents,” “boxes,” and so on.

Left to his own devices Hal turned idly to the long table.  From the newspaper which the Reverend Norman Hale had left, there glared up at him in savage black type this heading:—­

  CERTINA A FAKE

  Religious Editor Shows Up Business and Professional

  Methods of Dr. L. Andre Surtaine

The article was made up of excerpts from a religious weekly’s expose, interspersed with semi-editorial comment.  As he skimmed it, Hal’s wrath and loyalty waxed in direct ratio.  Malice was obvious in every line, to the incensed reader.  But the cause and purpose were not so clear.  As he looked up, brooding upon it, he caught his father’s eye.

“Been reading that slush, Hal?”

“Yes, sir.  Of course it’s all a pack of lies.  But what’s the reason for it?”

“Blackmail, son.”

“Do they expect to get money out of you this way?”

“No.  That isn’t it.  I’ve always refused to have any business dealings with ’em, and this is their way of revenge.”

“But I didn’t know you advertised Certina in the local papers.”

“We don’t.  Proprietaries don’t usually advertise in their own towns.  We’re so well known at home that we don’t have to.  But some of the side lines, like the Relief Pills, that go out under another trade name, use space in the Worthington papers.  The ‘Clarion’ isn’t getting that copy, so they’re sore.”

“Can’t you sue them for libel, Dad?”