"It's not my way to hurry. You will understand that well when I explain. I'm needing friendly advice."
He had ever worn the air of preoccupation during our twelve years' acquaintance, but that seemed proper to an inventor burdened with the task of devising and selecting novelties for the Annual Announcement by which Miss Minnely's Prize Package Department furthers the popularity of her famous Family Blessing. The happy possessor of five new subscription certificates, on remitting them to Adam's Department, receives by mail, prepaid, Number 1 Prize Package. Number 2 falls to the collector of ten such certificates; and so on, in gradations of Miss Minnely's shrewd beneficence. The magnifico of one thousand certificates obtains choice between a gasoline auto-buggy and a New England farm. To be ever adding to or choosing from the world's changing assortment of moral mechanical toys, celluloid table ornaments, reversible albums, watches warranted gold filled, books combining thrill with edification, and more or less similar "premiums" to no calculable end, might well account for Old Adam's aspect, at once solemn and unsettled.
"What is your trouble?" I enquired.
"The Odistor. My greatest discovery!" he whispered.
"Indeed! For your Department?"
"We will see about that. It is something mighty wonderful—I don't know but I should say almighty."
"Goodness! What is its nature?"
"I won't say—not here. You couldn't believe me without seeing it work—I wouldn't have believed it myself on anybody's word. I will bring it on to your lodgings—that's a good place for the exhibition. No—I won't even try to explain here—we might be overheard." He glanced up and down Tremont Street, then across—"Sh—there she is herself!" He dodged into a drug store opposite the Touraine.
Miss Mehitable Minnely, sole proprietor of The Family Blessing, was moving imposingly from the Boylston Street front of the hotel toward her auto-brougham. At the top step she halted and turned her cordial, broad, dominant countenance in both directions as if to beam on streets crowded with potential prize-package takers. She then spoke the permitting word to two uniformed deferential attendants, who proceeded to stay her carefully by the elbows, in her descent of the stone steps. Foot passengers massed quickly on both sides of her course, watching her large, slow progress respectfully. When the porters had conveyed her across the pavement, and with deferential, persistent boosting made of her an ample lading for the "auto," the chauffeur touched his wide-peaked cap, and slowly rolled her away towards Brimstone Corner en route to the Blessing Building. Adam came out of the drug store looking relieved.
"She doesn't like to see any of us on the street, office hours," he explained with lips close to my ear. "Not that I ought to care one mite." He smiled somewhat defiantly and added, "To see me dodging the old lady's eye you'd never guess I'm her boss. But I am." He eyed my wonder exultantly and repeated, "It's so. She doesn't know it. Nobody knows, except me. But I am her boss. Just whenever I please."