IN REPLY
Don did not receive Miss Winthrop's letter until the following
evening. He had dropped into the club to join Wadsworth in a
bracer,--a habit he had drifted into this last month,--and opened the
envelope with indifferent interest, expecting a tailor's announcement.
He caught his breath at the first line, and then read the letter
through some five times. Wadsworth, who was waiting politely, grew
impatient.
"If you're trying to learn that by heart--" he began.
Don thrust the letter into his pocket.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "It--it was rather important."
They sat down in the lounge.
"What's yours?" inquired Wadsworth, as in response to a bell a page
came up.
"A little French vichy," answered Don.
"Oh, have a real drink," Wadsworth urged.
"I think I'd better not to-night," answered Don.
Wadsworth ordered a cock-tail for himself.
"How's the market to-day?" he inquired. He always inquired how the
market was of his business friends--as one inquires as to the health
of an elderly person.
"I don't know," answered Don.
"You don't mean to say you've cut out business?" exclaimed Wadsworth.
"I guess I have," Don answered vaguely.
"Think of retiring?"
"To tell the truth, I hadn't thought of it until very lately; but
now--"
Don restrained a desire to read his letter through once more.
"Take my advice and do it," nodded Wadsworth. "Nothing in it but a
beastly grind. It's pulling on you."
As a matter of fact, Don had lost some five pounds in the last month,
and it showed in his face. But it was not business which had done
that, and he knew it. Also Miss Winthrop knew it.
It was certainly white of her to take the trouble to write to him like
this. He wondered why she did. She had not been very much in his
thoughts of late, and he took it for granted that to the same degree
he had been absent from hers. And here she had been keeping count of
every time he came in late. Curious that she should have done that!
In the library, he took out the letter and read it through again.
Heavens, he could not allow himself to be discharged like an
unfaithful office-boy! His father would turn in his grave. It would be
almost as bad as being discharged for dishonesty.
Don's lips came together in thin lines. This would never do--never in
the world. As Miss Winthrop suggested, he had much better resign.
Perhaps he ought to resign, anyway. No matter what he might do in the
future, he could not redeem the past; and if Farnsworth felt he had
not been playing the game right, he ought to take the matter in his
own hands and get off the team. But, in a way, that would be
quitting--and the Pendletons had never been quitters. It would be
quitting, both inside the office and out. He had to have that salary
to live on. Without it, life would become a very serious matter. The
more he thought of this, the more he realized that resigning was out
of the question. He really had no alternative but to make good; so he
_would_ make good.
The resolution, in itself, was enough to brace him. The important
thing now was, not to make Carter, Rand & Seagraves understand this,
not to make Farnsworth understand this: it was to make Miss Winthrop
understand it. He seized a pen and began to write.
MY DEAR SARAH K. WINTHROP [he began]:--
Farnsworth ought to be sitting at your desk plugging that machine,
and you ought to be holding down his chair before the roll-top
desk. You'd get more work out of every man in the office in a week
than he does in a month. Maybe he knows more about bonds than you
do, but he doesn't know as much about men. If he did he'd have
waded into me just the way you did.
I'm not saying Farnsworth hasn't good cause to fire me. He has,
and that's just what you've made clear. But, honest and hope to
die, I didn't realize it until I read your letter. I knew I'd been
getting in late and all that; but, as long as it didn't seem to
make any difference to any one, I couldn't see the harm in it. I'd
probably have kept on doing it if you hadn't warned me. And I'd
have been fired, and deserved it.
If that had happened I think my father would have risen from his
grave long enough to come back and disown me. He was the sort of
man I have a notion you'd have liked. He'd be down to the office
before the doors were open, and he'd stay until some one put him
out. I guess he was born that way. But I don't believe he ever
stayed up after ten o'clock at night in his life. Maybe there
wasn't as much doing in New York after ten in those days as there
is now.
I don't want to make any excuses, but, true as you're living, if I
turned in at ten I might just as well set up business in the Fiji
Islands. It's about that time the evening really begins. How do
you work it yourself? I wish you'd tell me how you get in on time,
looking fresh as a daisy. And what sort of an alarm-clock do you
use? I bought one the other day as big as a snare-drum, and the
thing never made a dent. Then I tried having Nora call me, but I
only woke up long enough to tell her to get out and went to sleep
again. If your system isn't patented I wish you'd tell me what it
is. In the mean while, I'm going to sit up all night if I can't
get up any other way.
Because I'm going to make the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves
on time, beginning to-morrow morning. You watch me. And I'll make
up for the time I've overdrawn on lunches by getting back in
twenty minutes after this. As for errands--you take the time when
Farnsworth sends me out again.
You're dead right in all you said, and if I can't make good in
the next few months I won't wait for Farnsworth to fire me--I'll
fire myself. But that isn't going to happen. The livest man in
that office is going to be
Yours truly,
DONALD PENDLETON, JR.
Don addressed the letter to the office, mailed it, and went home to
dress. But before going upstairs he called to Nora.
"Nora," he said, "you know that I'm in business now?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you wouldn't like to see me fired, would you?"
"Oh, Lord, sir!" gasped Nora.
"Then you get me up to-morrow morning at seven o'clock, because if I'm
late again that is just what is going to happen. And you know what Dad
would say to that."
The next morning Don stepped briskly into the office five minutes
ahead of Miss Winthrop.