“Trimmer,” mused Bobby. “Oh, yes; he is the John Burnit Store’s chief competitor; concern backs up against ours, fronting on Market Street. Show him in, Johnson.”
Jack Starlett, who had dropped in to loaf a bit, rose to go.
“Sit down,” insisted Bobby. “I’m conducting this thing all open and aboveboard. You know, I think I shall like business.”
“They tell me it’s the greatest game out,” commented Starlett, and just then Mr. Trimmer entered.
He was a little, wiry man as to legs and arms, but fearfully rotund as to paunch, and he had a yellow leather face and black eyes which, though gleaming like beads, seemed to have a muddy cast. Bobby rose to greet him with a cordiality in no degree abashed by this appearance.
“And what can we do for you, Mr. Trimmer?” he asked after the usual inanities of greeting had been exchanged.
“Take lunch with me,” invited Mr. Trimmer, endeavoring to beam, his heavy, down-drooping gray mustache remaining immovable in front of the deeply-chiseled smile that started far above the corners of his nose and curved around a display of yellow teeth. “I have just learned that you have taken over the business, and I wish as quickly as possible to form with the son the same cordial relations which for years I enjoyed with the father.”
Bobby looked him contemplatively in the eye, but had no experience upon which to base a picture of his father and Mr. Trimmer enjoying perpetually cordial relations with a knife down each boot leg.
“Very sorry, Mr. Trimmer, but I am engaged for lunch.”
“Dinner, then—at the Traders’ Club,” insisted Mr. Trimmer, who never for any one moment had remained entirely still, either his foot or his hand moving, or some portion of his body twitching almost incessantly.