Without fear, Mr. Jones laid aside his cigarette with care, and gulped such a deep draught of air that he became red in the face and gave other evidences of being about to burst from undue pneumatic pressure.
Kelly viewed with undisguised amusement the undeveloped protuberance thrust forward in pride by the stenographer. “You haven’t the chest expansion of a lizard,” he told him.
Mr. Jones received this deadly insult in the midst of deep bowing. He exploded, and, leaning against a desk, breathed rapidly while the injured look in his eyes attempted to carry that reproof which his speechlessness otherwise forbade.
“If you do that exercise much,” Kelly gloomily predicted, “you are going to relax in a wooden box. Who gave you that stuff? You must have been getting your ideas from the gymnasium of a bug house.”
For obvious reasons Mr. Jones failed to reply.
“There is no sense in the thing. What you need is–” Kelly descended from his perch and seizing him, only that instant recovered from speechlessness, in his strong grasp, made exploratory investigations with his fingers throughout the panting one’s anatomy.
“Ouch,” wailed the pained Mr. Jones.
“Shut up. Do you want the old man out here? I’m not going to hurt you. I want to find out what ails you.”
“Leggo, you are nearly killing me.”
Mr. Jones rubbed himself ruefully when Kelly loosed him. “You big stiff, ain’t you got no sense, gouging around in a fellow’s insides that way? You are liable to put a man out of business,” he protested.