Will you come along ?" They declined, and when he left them one smiled at the other.
"They're smart people across the frontier, but to send a man into the northern timber belt looking for paint trade openings or resin they can make varnish of is about the limit to commercial enterprise." Harding was leaning back in his chair in the smoking-room with a frown on his face when Blake joined him.

He had a nervous, alert look, and was dressed with fastidious neatness.
"So you have come along at last!" he remarked in an ironical tone.
"Feel like getting down to business, or shall we put it off again ?" "Sorry I couldn't come earlier," Blake replied.

"Somehow or other I couldn't get away.

Things kept turning up to occupy me." "It's a way they seem to have.

Your trouble is that you're too diffuse; you spread yourself out too much.