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355 petition like this," Bennett remarked crudely, but with subtle* intention. He was amused by Stewart's look of disdain and his reply.

"When I spoke of the advantage of being on the ground, I had no reference to 'a pull.' I was n't considering the increased facilities for using underhand methods. I simply meant, of course, the obvious thing—that there is an advantage in being thoroughly familiar with the site."

"Oh yes, I suppose maybe we ought to throw ourselves into the spirit of the thing a little better than the outsiders," Bennett agreed. "By the way, I can't thank you enough, Lee, for letting go of Durant; that fellow's a whole team; at least I find him so. Funny thing how men run, is n't it—how a fellow will be of absolutely no use to one man and the long-lost brother to another?"

"I'm glad to hear Durant is doing so well—succeeding so well," said Stewart, rising from the table. "I feel a certain interest in his career; you remember, Mr. Bennett," and he smiled quite good-naturedly, "you never found him so useful until after he'd been with me."

"Oh, there's no doubt about it; your training was an excellent thing for him—excellent," Bennett conceded. "You put a polish on him that he would n't have acquired otherwise—and his resourcefulness in matters of detail has developed amazingly. I'm very much tickled over a little inspiration of his, last week—in these competition drawings; it cleared up a difficulty that we'd been bothering over for days—and made that plan as clean as a whistle. Sorry I can't tell you just what it was—I think you'd be amused by the cleverness of it."

"Yes, he's a clever fellow," Stewart said.

He separated himself from this man, who both bored and annoyed him, and went back to his office. Bennett had chosen a particularly unfortunate moment to enlarge on Durant's peculiar gifts,—a moment when Stewart was finding himself very much in need of those faculties for neat economical arrangement which his former draughtsman