"Bounce you? Why?"
"Think me crazy. I tell you she is conservative. And she is ready to throw me out—thinks I'm a back number. I can hardly blame her. Fact is, I have given so much time and thought to the Odistor of late years that I haven't found or invented half enough attractions for the Announcement. Last week she gave me an assistant—a Pusher. That means she is intending him to supersede me about two years from now. Yet I could invent a man with twice his brains in half the time. Sometimes I am tempted to put the Odistor on the small job of blowing him out into Massachusetts Bay. But he is not to blame for being as God made him. Then, again, I think how I could down him by simply showing the thing to Miss Minnely. But the cold fit comes again—what if she thinks me crazy? I'd lose my forty-five dollars a week and might be driven to Bossing the World. It's hard for old men to get new jobs in Boston. They draw the dead-line at fifty. Just when a man's got some experience they put a boy of twenty-six on top of him. On the other hand, suppose she does consider it, and does see the whole meaning of it. First thing she might do with her Odistor would be to put a cyclone whirling me." He sighed heavily. "Fact is I've got myself into a kind of hole. What do you advise?"
"Bury the Odistor. Forget it, Adam. Then, with your mind free, you can invent new things for the Announcement. I see no other escape from your predicament."
"I expected you to advise that in the end," said Adam, and began repacking his singular mechanism. "Bury it I will. But how can I forget it? May be it has exhausted my inventive powers. What then? I'm bounced. It's tough to have to begin all over again at sixty-three, and me Boss of the World if I could only bring myself to boss. If I do get bounced and do get vexed, maybe I'll unbury it and show Miss Minnely what it can do. Well, good evening, and thank you for your interest and advice."
He departed with the old, solemn unsettled look on his honest Nova Scotian countenance.
Since that day I have frequently seen Adam, but he gives me no recognition. He goes about with eyes on the ground, probably studying the complicated and frightful situation of a World Power animated by liberalism and dominated by conscience. Some in the Blessing office tell me that Miss Minnely's disapproving eye is often on her old employee. They say she will soon lift the Pusher over Adam's white head.
What will he do then? I remember with some trepidation the vague threat with which he left me. At night, when a high gale happens to be blowing, I listen in wild surmise that Adam was bounced yesterday, and that the slates, bricks and beams of the Family Blessing Building are hurtling about the suburbs as if in signal that he has liberated a large specimen of the mysterious globule and embarked, of necessity, on the woeful business of bossing the world.
MISS MINNELY'S MANAGEMENT
I
George Renwick substituted "limb" for "leg," "intoxicated" for "drunk," and "undergarment" for "shirt," in "The Converted Ringmaster," a short-story-of-commerce, which he was editing for "The Family Blessing." When he should have eliminated all indecorum it would go to Miss Minnely, who would "elevate the emotional interest." She was sole owner of "The Blessing," active director of each of its multifarious departments. Few starry names rivalled hers in the galaxy of American character-builders.