AGNES DECIDES THAT SHE WILL WAIT
Applerod, his poise nearly recovered, bounded into the office where
Johnson sat stolidly working away, his sense of personal contentedness
enhanced by the presence of Biff Bates, who sat idly upon the flat-top
desk, dangling his legs and waiting for Bobby. Mr. Applerod paid no
attention whatever to Mr. Bates, that gentleman being quite beneath
his notice, but with vast importance he laid down in front of Mr.
Johnson the note which Bobby had given him.
"_Mr._ Johnson," he pompously directed, "you will please attend to
this little matter as soon as possible."
"Applerod," said Johnson, glancing at the note and looking up with
sudden fire, "does this mean that you are no longer even partially my
employer?"
"That's it exactly."
"Then you, Applerod, don't you dare call me _Mr._ Johnson again!" And
he shook a bony fist at his old-time work-fellow.
Biff Bates nearly fell off the desk, but with rare presence of mind
restrained his glee.
Mr. Applerod, smiling loftily, immediately wielded his bludgeon.
"We should not quarrel over trifles," he stated commiseratingly. "We
are once more companions in misfortune. There is no Applerod Addition.
It is a swamp again."
"What do you mean?" asked Johnson incredulously, but suspending his
indignation for the instant.
"This," said Applerod: "that the entire addition is a hundred-acre mud
puddle this morning. You couldn't sell a lot in it to a blind man.
Every cent that was invested in it is lost. The whole marsh was fed
from underground springs that have come up through it and overflowed
the place."
"Trimmer again," said Biff Bates, and slid off the desk; then he
looked at his watch with a curious speculative smile.
"But if it is all lost," protested Johnson, looking again at the note
and pausing in the making out of the check, "how do you come to get
this?"
"He owed it to me," asserted Applerod. "I wanted to sell out when I
first found that we were competing with Silas Trimmer, and young
Burnit kept me from it by an injunction. He offered me ten thousand
dollars for my interest once, but this morning when I went to accept
that offer he would only give me this five thousand. It's just five
thousand dollars that he's robbed me of."
"_Robbed!_" shrilled Johnson, jumping from his chair. "Applerod, you
weigh a hundred and eighty pounds and I weigh a hundred and
thirty-seven, but I can lick you the best day you ever lived; and by
thunder and blazes! if you let fall another remark like that I'll
knock your infernal head off!"
Mr. Johnson had on no coat, but he felt the urgent need to remove
something, so he tore off one false sleeve, wadded it up in a little
ball and slammed it on the floor with great vigor, tore off the other
one, wadded it up and slammed that down. Biff Bates, quivering with
joy, rang loudly upon a porcelain electric-light shade with his pencil
and called: "Time!"
There was no employment for a referee, however, for Mr. Applerod, with
astonishing agility, sprang to the door and held it half open, ready
for a hurried exit in case of any other demonstration. It was shocking
to think that he might be drawn into an undignified altercation--and
with a mere clerk! Also, it might be dangerous.
"Nothing doing, chum," said Biff Bates disgustedly to his friend
Johnson. "This bunch of mush-ripe bananas ain't even a quitter. He's a
never-beginner. But you'll do fine, old scout. Come along with me. I
got a treat for you."
Mr. Johnson, breathing scorn that alternately dented and inflated his
nostrils, slowly donned his coat and hat without removing his eyes
from Applerod, who, as the two approached the door, edged uncertainly
away from it.
"I've got to go out, anyhow," said Johnson, addressing his remarks
exclusively to Mr. Bates, but his glare exclusively to Mr. Applerod.
"I'm going to put this check into the hands of Mr. Chalmers, so Mr.
Robert don't get cheated by any yellow-livered _snake in the grass_!"
And he spit out those last violent words with a sudden vehemence which
made Mr. Applerod drop his shiny hat.
When Bobby came into the office a few minutes later he found Applerod,
his hat upon his lap, waiting in one of the customers' chairs with
stiff solemnity.
"Why aren't you at your desk, Applerod?" asked Bobby sharply. "You
have an immense amount of unopened mail, and some of it may contain
checks which will have to be sent back."
"Mr. Burnit," said Mr. Applerod, rising with great dignity and
throwing back his shoulders, "I consider myself no longer in your
employ. I have resigned."
Bobby looked at him thoughtfully and weighed rapidly in his mind a
great many things. He remembered that his father had once said of the
two men: "Johnson has a pea-green liver and is a pessimist, but he is
honest. Applerod suffers from too much health and is an optimist, and
I presume him to be honest, but I never tested it." Yet his father had
seen fit to keep Applerod in his intimate employ all these years,
recognizing in him material of value. Moreover, he had advised Bobby
to keep both men, and Bobby, to-day more than ever, placed great faith
in the wisdom of his father.
"Mr. Applerod," said he, "I dislike to be harsh with you, but if you
don't put up your hat and get at that bundle of mail I shall be
compelled to consider discharging you. Where's Johnson?"
"He went out with Mr. Bates, sir."
When Bobby left, Applerod was industriously sorting the mail on his
desk, preparing to open it.
Bobby let himself into the big new gymnasium and walked back through
the deserted hall to the small room that was used for individual
training. As he neared the door he could hear the sound of loud voices
and the shuffling of feet, and heard the commanding voice of Biff
Bates shout "Break!"
The door was locked, but through the slide window at the side a
strange tableau met his eyes. Stooped and lean Johnson, as chalk-white
of face as ever, had paunchy and thin-legged Silas Trimmer by the
collar, and over Biff Bates' intervening body was trying to rain blows
into the center of the circular smile, now flattened to an oval of
distress.
"Break, Johnson, break!" begged Biff. "Don't put him out till you feed
him all he's got coming." Thereupon he succeeded in extracting Mr.
Trimmer from the grasp of Mr. Johnson and forced the former back upon
a chair, where he began to fan him with a towel in most approved
fashion.
"Let me out of this!" gasped Mr. Trimmer. "I'll have you arrested for
assault and conspiracy."
"They'll only pinch a corpse, for the cops'll find me tickled to death
when they get here," responded Mr. Bates gaily. "Now you're all right.
Get up!"
"Let me out of this, I say!" commanded Mr. Trimmer frantically. "I'll
run you into the penitentiary! I'll break you up in business! I'll
hire thugs to break every bone in your body!"
"Is that all?" inquired Biff complacently, and grabbed him as he
started to run around the room in a wild hunt for an outlet. "Stand up
here and put up a fight or I'll punch you myself. I've been aching to
do it for a year. That's why I got Doc Willets to dope it out to you
that you was dyin' for training, and why I kept shifting your hour to
when there was nobody here. Go to him, chum!"
Then ensued the strangest sparring match that the grinning and
stealthily silent Bobby had ever seen. Johnson, with a true "tiger
crouch" which he could not have avoided if he had wished, began
dancing around and around the spherical body of Mr. Trimmer, without
science and without precaution, keeping his two arms going like
windmills, and occasionally landing a light blow upon some portion of
Mr. Trimmer's unresisting anatomy; but finally a whirl so vigorous
that it sent Johnson spinning upon his own heel, landed squarely
beneath the jaw of Silas. That gentleman, with a puffed eye and a
bleeding lip and two teeth gone, rose from his feet with the impact of
the blow, and landed with a grunt in a huge basket of soiled
bath-towels.
"Johnson," called the laughter-shaken voice of Bobby through the
window, "I'm ashamed of you!"
Mr. Johnson looked up happily from his task of wiping away a little
trickle of blood from his already swollen nose.
"Did you see me do it?" he demanded, thrilling with pride. "Mr.
Burnit, I--I never had so much fun in my life. Never, never! By the
way, sir," and even upon that triumphant moment his duty obtruded, "I
have a letter for you that I brought away from the office," and
through the window he handed one of the inevitable gray envelopes. It
was inscribed:
_To My Son, Upon the Failure of Applerod's Swamp Scheme_
"In the midst of pleasure we are in pain," murmured Bobby, and tore
open the letter. In it he read:
"My Dear Boy:
"A man must not only examine a business proposition from all
sides, but must also turn it over and look well at the bottom.
I never knew what was the matter with that swamp scheme,
except Applerod, but I didn't want to know any more. You did.
"Well, you don't need wisdom. I've put one-half your fortune
where it will yield you a living income. Try to cut at least
one eye-tooth with the other half. Your trustee is instructed
to give you another start.
"YOUR LOVING FATHER."
His trustee! Once more he must face her with failure; go to her
beaten, and accept through her hands the means to gain himself another
buffeting. He had not the heart to see her now, but he was not turned
altogether coward, for leaving the scene of the late conflict
abruptly, all its humor spoiled for him, he telephoned her what had
happened and that he would be out in the evening.
"No, you must come now. I want you," she gently insisted, and when he
had come to her she went directly to him and put both her hands upon
his shoulders.
"It wasn't fair, Bobby; it wasn't fair!" she cried. "None of it is
fair, and your father had no right to bind me down with promises when
you need me so. I'm willing to break them all. Bobby, I'll marry you
to-morrow if you say so."
He drew a long, trembling breath, and then he put his hands gently
upon both her cheeks and kissed her on the forehead.
"Let's don't," he said simply. "I have my own blood up now, and I want
to take this other chance. I want to play the game out to the end.
You'll wait, won't you?"
She looked up at him through moist eyes. He was so big and so strong
and so good, and already through the past year of earnest purpose
there had come firm, new lines upon his face, lines that meant
something in the ultimate building of character; and she recognized
that perhaps stern old John Burnit had been right after all.
"Indeed, I can wait," she whispered. "Proudly, Bobby."