March felt himself getting provisionally very angry again. "Excuse me,
Fulkerson, but did you know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted to
see me for?"
"Well, no, I didn't exactly," said Fulkerson, taking his usual seat on a
chair and looking over the back of it at March. "I saw he was on his car
about something, and I thought I'd better not monkey with him much. I
supposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow."
Fulkerson broke into a laugh.
March remained serious. "Mr. Dryfoos," he said, willing to let the simple
statement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, "came in
here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on the
magazine--to turn him off, as he put it."
"Did he?" asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. "The old man is
business, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody else to
do Lindau's work for you. This town is just running over with
half-starved linguists. What did you say?"
"What did I say?" March echoed. "Look here, Fulkerson; you may regard
this as a joke, but I don't. I'm not used to being spoken to as if I were
the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and cultivated
man like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if that's your
idea of me--"
"Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn't mind the old man's way.
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