Susan Bates answered him pantingly, all a-tremble with nervous
excitement. "Mr. Bates is a just man, and not an ungenerous man,
but--but"--She clasped her hands and leaned forward anxiously. "Mr. Bates
and I have always stepped along together. He has always done whatever I
have asked him to do. He has never disappointed me. But--oh, Roger, he
never knew your father in those early days; if he had, could he stand by
and see him on the edge of ruin without making some effort to save him?"
She waved her hand over the disorder of Roger's desk. "That's everything
I've got; use as much of it as you need."
She began to cry a little. Minnie Peters, who always cried when she
could, pulled out her handkerchief and frankly sobbed aloud.
Roger studied the two women with some perplexity and with a slight shade
of pique.
"It is true," he began, very proudly and much too coldly, "that the
affairs of the Marshall & Belden Company are moving towards the hands of
a receiver, but the affairs of David Marshall himself are in the hands of
his son; and they were never in better condition than they are to-day."
This was Roger's song of victory over his recent success with the largest
operation (on behalf both of his father and of himself) that he had ever
undertaken. It seemed as if all the world must know of that--must ring
with it, in fact; yet it was this very hour which Benevolence had now
chosen for the precipitation of her golden shower.