While Evan and Julia ate their candy and put their digestive organs out of tune, Frankie Arling sat reading stray poems from her French reader. She repeated to herself, in the little nook she called her study, a verse of De Musset's:
"J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,Et mes amis et ma gaieté;J'ai perdu jusqu'à, la fiertéQui faisait croire à mon genie."
That was about how she felt. She had cried considerably when Our Banker first went away. Now she did not yield to the temptation of tears, but she was miserably lonesome and sad—the more so since his letters grew less and less frequent and less intimate.
Frankie was a girl of seventeen and as romantic as those young creatures are made. She had always been Evan's "school girl," and he had always been her juvenile hero. Perhaps theirs was the commonest form of love-affair, but the character of the affection could never rightly be called "common." Incompatibility makes affection commonplace and mean, but Frankie and Evan were suited to each other. They both knew they were, and that knowledge made them feel sure of the ideals they cherished.
Because she clung to her ideals so tenaciously Frankie was often very wretched; she was so on the night of Evan's visit to the Waterseas with the box of candy. Not that she knew about it—but she began to doubt the impossibility of such happenings. His letters had gradually fed a suspicion in her mind.
An idea occurred to Frankie. She would call up Mr. Dunlap, the Hometon teller, and invite him up to spend the evening; then she would question him concerning the fickleness of bankclerks.
Dunlap answered her telephone call with the words: "Well, Miss Arling, I'm working to-night—but I'll gladly postpone work foryou." He accepted the invitation with alacrity and seemed quite pleased with the verandah welcome he received. Mrs. Arling was out, and he could not occupy the parlor alone with the daughter; but still he had reason to be thankful.
"How is Evan getting along?" was one of the first questions the bankclerk asked.
"Very well, I think," answered Frankie; then, settling immediately to business: "Tell me, Mr. Dunlap, is bank work very exciting?"
"Oh, I don't know. There are some things about it that keep up your spirits. Not so much the bank work itself as the associations."
"What do you mean by 'associations'?"
"Well—when a fellow gets moved, for instance, he meets new—"
"Girls?" suggested Frankie, smiling faintly.
"Yes—like you."
Miss Arling did not recognize the attempt at gallantry.
"I suppose you have been moved pretty often, haven't you, Mr. Dunlap?"
"Six times in four years."
"Have you a girl in every place where you lived?"
"Not exactly," he laughed. "Of course, I write an odd letter to somebody in every one of those towns."
The school-girl had found out what she wanted to know. If Dunlap had come to visit her with any idea that she had forgotten her school-"fellow," Nelson, he could not have cherished the illusion long, for she seemed to lose interest in everything, all very suddenly, and when he suggested that he probably ought to go back and balance the ledger-keeper's books she encouraged him in so generous an undertaking. A man with six girls knows when he is wanted.
Frankie went in to her piano and played "Sleep and Forget." That was a strange selection for a young school-girl to choose; but young girls are born dramatists. Darkness had fallen and the stars were beginning to peep. She was on the verandah again, looking at the evening sky, wondering why people left home and loved ones for the other things, wealth, fame, pleasure, change. The night had sadness in its countenance—which it reflected to the girl's. She was quite like a summer's evening. She should have been, perhaps, more like a summer morning.
While the Hometon girl stood on her father's verandah, gazing and philosophizing, Evan stood on the Watersea verandah at Mt. Alban, gazing also, but not reflecting. He was looking into the eyes of Julia, rather steadily for a lad of less than eighteen, and talking.
"Mighty good of you to take in a stranger like me," he was saying.
"My dear boy" (Julia was past nineteen), "we just love to have your company. Come any time you can."
He had a sudden impulse to take her hand, but she seemed to detect it, and subdued him with a powerful smile.
"Miss Wat—"
"Call me 'Julia,' won't you?"
"All right, I will." (But he didn't.) "I think you are a good sport."
"Oh, Mr.—"
"Call me 'Evan,' will you?"
"What a nice name," she smiled; "it's odd. All right, Evan, but you mustn't call me a 'sport.'"
He had thought it was going to be considerable of a compliment.
"You know what I mean, Miss—Julia!"
"Oh, don't call me 'Miss Julia,'" she laughed; "that sounds like a maiden aunt."
He colored; his breaks were coming too thickly.
They wandered down the lawn-walk to the gate, and there Nelson bade her good-night by shaking hands. He knew she would be in the bank next day, but handshakes are always in order after nine o'clock p.m.
As he walked along Mt. Alban's quietest and prettiest street toward the bank a peculiar sense of loneliness and guilt possessed him. He suggested to himself that he only regarded Julia as a friend, and that knowing people like the Waterseas was necessary to his success as a banker. Of course he intended to pay his way along; he would always give Julia candy and take her out, in return for her kindness to him. The thought that he might be involving her in one of those attachments more easily made than broken did not enter Evan's head. He was too inexperienced to worry over such matters. Others were too experienced.
Telepathic waves reached him from Hometon. He saw Frankie's face clearly outlined inside the Little Dipper. He remembered his words to her, words containing a promise. Yes, indeed, he would be true—
But still he felt the warmth of Julia's hand. Why had he taken it in his, and why had he felt buoyant when she blushed?
He was vaguely conscious of a conflict in his heart. Yet he swore to himself that everything would be all right. Young men are usually quite sure that nothing unpleasant can come of anything.
Bill Watson was sitting in the manager's office when Evan entered. He greeted the savings man with a puff of smoke followed by no words.
"Something new for you to be in so early, Bill," said Evan.
Bill opened his mouth in the shape of a cave, and kept the white smoke revolving within it—like some sort of mysterious and legendary white fleece.
"How did she like the chocolates?" he said suddenly.
"They seemed to go all right."
Bill puffed a while.
"Shame to blow good coin like that," he said, musingly.
"Why?"
"Well, when a fellow thinks of the blots he makes earning a bean he should be gentle with it."
Nelson laughed derisively.
"You're not getting economical, are you, Bill?"
"No, but, I'm sore on myself to-night. About once a month I take a night off to repent."
Evan pinched his pal's knee-cap.
"A fellow can't be a piker, Bill," he said, with the air of a profligate young millionaire escapading in the columns of the press. "You can't go to parties and things without spending money."
Watson looked at his desk-mate.
"Evan," he said, thoughtfully, "in about two years more you'll be just where I am."
"Where's that?"
"In debt, and a spendthrift—if you can call me a spendthrift for getting away with $400 a year."
Nelson sighed. It was unusual for Watson to turn monitor. What he said was all the more effective on that account.
The Hometon boy thought of his tailor's account. He would have to be writing home for more money before long—unless he could borrow it. The very caution Bill had sounded suggested to Nelson a way out. He would borrow from a stranger. He could pay his father back the cheque, and also he could settle the tailor's bill. Just how he would settle the real debt itself was not for present consideration. It never is. It is the humanest thing in the world to borrow money.
Evan turned the light on his desk and wrote a letter to his father. It thanked the merchant for his loan, in rather a businesslike manner, and assured him he would get the money back. This was the letter of an ostensibly self-made son to his merchant father, reversing the title of a well-known story.
Another letter Evan wrote—to Frankie Arling. This one was as follows:
"Dear Frank,—It is quite a while since I wrote you. I hope you have not been accusing me of negligence. I am pretty busy, you know.
"The people up here are mighty kind to us bank-fellows. There is one family in particular that uses us white. Miss Watersea—that is the daughter—told me last night I was to come up as often as I could. They have a magnificent home. I wish I were making more money so that I could take Julia (that's her name) out more.
"How are you getting along at school? It's surprising how soon a person forgets those lessons you are now learning. Bill is calling me—I must close for this time.
"Yours, as before,"EVAN."
If he had known the comments Frankie would make on a conspicuous sentence of one of his paragraphs, Evan would have made the letter still shorter than it was. It was natural that he should refer to Julia. One should never write a letter to anyone when someone else is on his mind, unless the third party is a mutual friend. Letters, like young children just able to talk, have a habit of telling tales. Often we say to a sheet of paper what we would scarcely tell by word of mouth to the one to whom it is addressed; and yet the letter is mailed and forgotten with the profoundest nonchalance.
The following day a long envelope came from head office to the Mt. Alban office. It contained the "increases."
Castle's salary was raised from $650 to $800. Watson got $100; Evan a raise of $50. The junior did not expect any, and he was not disappointed in his expectations. Nevertheless he was disappointed.
Mr. Robb was snubbed! He said nothing. Bill emulated the manager's stoicism—another two dollars per week made little difference to Bill; it would all have to go out in debts, anyway.
Castle "took" his increase with dignity, making no comments and voicing no rapture. Bill watched him from his ledger.
"Say, Alf," he said at last, under a growing deviltry, "you seem to be a favorite. Now I don't think you're worth eight hundred dollars a year—honestly, do you?"
The teller's delicate skin became pink.
"I don't blame you for being sore, Watson," he retorted, gingerly for him, "when head office shows discrimination; it hurts, I suppose."
Watson grinned. He rarely lost his temper. He sighed comically.
"I can't help if my name isn't Castle," he said, coolly.
The teller opened the door of his cage and rushed into the manager's room.
"Mr. Robb," he cried, in his tenor tones, "I'm not going to stand for the insults of Watson any longer."
"What's the matter now?" asked Robb, not encouragingly.
"Watson's talking of favoritism and that sort of rot. He knows I earn all I get from head office."
"That's right enough, Alf," said Robb, calmly. "You earn what you get, but you also get what you earn. The rest of us don't."
The teller was dumfounded. The way the manager spoke would have halted him even had he considered the words unjust—which he could not. But Castle's sense of dignity was too great to endure argument at that moment; he flushed with humiliation and withdrew unceremoniously from Robb's office.
Robb would not give his teller the satisfaction of calling Watson on the carpet, but when Castle had quit work for the day, the manager accosted Bill.
"Were you rubbing it into Alf to-day?" he asked, leaning against the ledger desk.
"Just a little," said Bill, smiling.
"You want to go easy, Watson. Some day Alf will be an inspector or something, and then he'll remember thee."
Bill looked up from his work quickly.
"Surely we don't have to curry the favor of a brat like that!" Then, in a moment, "His preaching against me to-day didn't seem to get him in very strong with the manager, Mr. Robb?"
Robb made a face.
"Oh, I don't pay much attention to him. Sometimes I feel sorry for him, and then again I can't help despising him. He's got bank aristocracy in him, and that makes it hard for him among us common fellows. I think I insulted him this afternoon—"
Bill interrupted with:
"Wouldn't be surprised if he squealed it to the Big Eye."
The boys called Inspector I. Castle the "Big Eye," because of his initial and of his facility for seeing things; also for other reasons.
"Oh, no," said the manager, sceptically, "I don't think he's that much of a cad."
"Well, you know, Mr. Robb, he'd soothe his poor little conscience with the thought that it is a fellow's duty to report any treason against head office. That's the policy the bank itself pursues. Why should Castle have any more honor than he is taught to have?"
Evan pretended to be busy, but he was listening.
Mr. Robb laughed.
"I'm ashamed of you, Watson," he said, and still smiling, walked away. Once inside his office, however, his face straightened and he looked steadily at a corner of the ceiling.
When Castle left the bank, about four-thirty, he walked soberly up town to the Coign Hotel and ascended to his room. It was a nice room for the teller of a town bank to occupy, boasting a wicker chair, a leather couch and a brass bed. A couple of rather pretentious pictures hung on the walls, otherwise decorated with pennants. The pennants were all Alfred knew about colleges. A desk filled one corner of the room, and there was the atmosphere of an office over all. The wonder is that Alf didn't have his bed encaged.
To his desk the nifty bankman turned his eyes. After washing his hands and adjusting his tie, he sat down to write.
Twenty-four hours after the letter he had written was mailed Inspector I. Castle received one addressed in his nephew's handwriting.
Before a week had passed Sam Robb enjoyed the privilege of reading a circular. It dealt with loyalty to the bank. One paragraph read as follows:
"We wish to warn the managers and staff against the common tendency to ridicule bank customs and establishments. Some of our employes have gone so far as to criticize head office indiscriminately in the matter of salaries, etc. We think it only fair that instances of disaffection should be reported to us, so that we may ascertain who is and who is not loyal to the bank, and reward accordingly."
The circular did not say "punish accordingly." That would not have been diplomatic.
Robb's face grew white—not with fear. All day he was silent, although it could not be said that he was irritable. He seemed uninterested in business and quiet—merely that.
Evan found him sitting moodily in his office late that evening. The savings man had been proving up his ledger. He did not greet the manager; he was going to pass on in silence when he heard his name spoken from the armchair.
"Yes, sir." He turned toward Mr. Robb.
"Are you in a hurry?" There was no sarcasm in the tone.
Evan sat down.
"No, sir; my time isn't worth much, I guess."
The manager looked at him analytically.
"You're beginning to realize it, are you?"
Nelson explained that he meant nothing by the remark, and Robb grunted discontentedly.
"I want you to see the circular we got to-day, Evan. Here, read that and tell me what you think of it."
While the young man read, the man of forty, the bachelor banker, waited. Robb was a lonesome man. He should have had a son almost as old as Evan, but he had none—and Evan would have to answer. It was somewhat comforting to have a confidant like him.
"Looks as if Castle did write, after all," said Evan, suddenly.
The manager smiled grimly.
"You've guessed it, I think," he said. "How would you like the current ledger, Evan?"
"Fine!"
It never took Evan long to decide anything when his success was at stake. He had unlimited faith in promotions and quite a strong confidence in his own powers. The clerical quirks of banking were day by day disappearing before his persistent faculties, and he was always ready to take on new work for the sake of experience.
"Well," continued the manager, "I'm going to suggest to head office that Alf is drawing too big a salary for this branch to support. It may get me in bad, but after all is said and done I'm manager here, and deserve a little say. If they move him the staff will be raised one notch all round. Watson ought to make a capital teller, and—I like him."
Before long the Mt. Alban manager wrote about the matter, without consulting his teller. The reply he got from head office read:
"Please instruct Mr. Evan Nelson to report at once to Creek Bend, Ontario. By taking on a new junior you can cut down expenses and still keep your present teller.
"(Signed) I. CASTLE."
When Bill Watson saw the inspector's instructions he cursed volubly behind his ledger and exclaimed:
"That settles it; me for a move, too."
Mr. Robb called him on the carpet.
"Watson," he said, "you have a nice job in this office. I heard you talking to Nelson a while ago about a move. Now if you shift from here it won't help your salary any, and it may involve you in a bunch of work. Besides, you have a free room here."
Bill thought a while.
"I guess that's a fact," he said finally. "I won't say anything. I guess you and I can hold the fort against Mr. Alfred Castle, eh?"
The manager laughed and extended his hand.
"Bill," he said (usually he called the ledger-keeper "Watson"), "I'm in wrong already, and if you asked to leave, head office might think there was something wrong with my management."
"I get you," said Bill, unconsciously speaking as he would to a pal. "By the way, do you suppose the Big Eye knows that Alf has a girl here?"
"Sure—likely," said Robb; "I'm now convinced that that boy chirrups to his dear uncle about everything."
After musing a bit Bill observed:
"I wish I could make him blow on me. No, I don't, either—he hasn't got the physique to stand it."
Robb chuckled. They spoke of Nelson.
"He's a good scout," said Bill. "How is it they always move the decent heads away?"
"I give them up," said the manager; "the older I grow the more head office puzzles me."
Nelson rapped at the door and was invited in. "Well," grinned the manager, "our pipe-dream didn't mature, did it?"
But Evan was having one of his own, and while he did not like to leave so kind a manager as Robb, he was thinking almost entirely of himself.
"I'll probably be teller in Creek Bend, won't I?"
"Yes," said Bill, "if there's anything to be 'told.'"
The manager laughed quietly.
"Take care you don't get lazy, Evan," he said. "They won't leave you there forever. It will be a city office for yours in due course, and then you'll need to be in practice. You'll be sure to hit a bees'-nest before you quit the bank."
"If they always use me right," said Evan, "I won't ever quit."
"Well," yawned Watson, "if you're satisfied, Nelsy, I guess they are."
Nelson waited a minute before making the request he came with the intention of making.
"Mr. Robb," he asked, "could I take a day off to run home and see the folks? Creek Bend is a hundred miles away and hard to get at—so the station agent says."
"Sure," said the manager, "but I'll have to 'fix' the head office travel-slip."
"What's that?" asked Evan.
Mr. Robb showed him a slip of paper to be signed by the manager of the branch left and the branch arrived at, also by the transient clerk. This slip records the time to a minute and allows no stop-over or visits en route. Neither does it permit of delay in leaving.
Evan suddenly decided he would not bother going home. He explained to Watson later that he considered it crooked to tamper with the travel-slip and thought he would be a cad to let the manager run the chance of further incurring head office displeasure by altering it.
"By heck," said Bill, "you've got to let some of that good conscience run out if you ever expect to stay in the bank."
"Well, Bill," was the reply, "when I find that I can't be honest in the bank I'll get out of it."
Watson remembered that remark years afterwards.
Evan wrote letters home, one to his mother and one to Frankie Arling. Then he packed his trunk and bade good-bye to Mt. Alban. Within four hours after receiving notice from head office he was on the train bound for Creek Bend.
Mrs. Nelson cried over her son's letter, and went to her husband for consolation.
"Carrie," he said, "it will do the boy good."
"But why didn't they let him say good-bye to us?" she cried.
"Well," answered George Nelson, "business is business, you know."
In his store-office the father used profanity. Men swear. He voiced a wish that all banks were made of sand and situated in the neighborhood of Newfoundland.
Frankie swallowed something in her throat as she read her letter. There was one grain of comfort in it, though, prompting the utterance:
"That ends Julia!"
Months had passed. Western Ontario was turning brown; heaps of leaves had already fallen. The village of Creek Bend was sleeping through the Indian Summer day. So was Evan Nelson—he lay sprawled on a hammock swung between two apple-trees behind the bank.
It is not to be inferred, however, that Evan was lazy, or that he had spent the summer lazily. Every morning before seven he had been out for a three-mile run, and every evening it had been football with the village team or a ride on the bicycle. He knew that physical exercise was necessary to health, and he took it as regularly as his mother used to make him take a spring tonic.
The work of the Creek Bend branch was ludicrously light. The manager was not a real one—he signed "acting." The branch had been opened for the sole purpose of keeping another bank out. Evan signed "pro-accountant." The first time he decorated a money order after that fashion a thrill made itself felt along his spine and in his hair.
Nelson's duties at first consisted of doing what little ledger work there was to do, writing settlement drafts and so forth, and attending to the mail. By degrees the manager, E. T. Dunn, initiated him into other work, until at last he did practically everything, even to the writing of returns.
As he sprawled now in the hammock between the apple-trees he gradually became conscious and his mind resumed the thread of thought sleep had broken off. He thought, with his eyes shut, about clerical work. Mentally he took a deposit from a customer, entered it in his "blotter," wrote it in the supplementary, and posted it in a ledger; it was included in the cash-book total, and from there found its way to the general ledger. So it was with every entry, credit or debit. "Returns" were merely copies of general-ledger balances, or parts thereof. Evan saw his way from beginning to end of the routine, and wondered that anything so simple as bank work could ever worry a man. He recalled the first week of his clerkship in Mt. Alban, and a grin crept over his somnolent features.
But Evan was not only musing—he was thinking. He knew the banking system was uniform throughout; and until he should be manager, he saw himself spending years working out some part of the routine now so simple to him. Mr. Dunn had worked at head office, and he told Nelson that there were clerks down there who did nothing from morning till night but add. Others there were who spent every hour of the day "checking" branch figures. What an existence! he thought; what a brainless life! Human automatons!
Thinking in these channels made Evan dissatisfied, and sometimes he offered pointed observations to the acting-manager. Dunn would smile and agree with anything that was said—but invariably settled down to his pipe and paper again, contented to let the business take care of him as it would. Dunn was one of a large class, in the bank, who are satisfied with six cigars a day, a bed each night, and seventy-five dollars a month.
The exercise Evan had accustomed himself to gave him increased vitality, and there being neither work nor social life enough in Creek Bend to satisfy this new vim he fell into the habit of reading and studying considerably. Dunn frequently expressed his surprise at seeing a bankclerk labor so, but the junior officer paid no attention, since the senior raised no objection. Evan gave his mind an excursion every day into the large world beyond him; the further he travelled the more ridiculous his present occupation seemed. But he encouraged reaction from these fits of treason and in the end criticized his own imagination more than those things, which, like the bank, are generally recognized to be tangibly great.
A book lay beneath the hammock this dreamy Autumn afternoon. It was "The Strenuous Life," by Roosevelt. One would have thought the reclining figure had grown weary of ambition and had cast the incentive from him. An Indian Summer day is not conducive to aspirations: mellow late-Autumn is more tolerant of beauty and love.
A flesh-and-blood combination of both came upon Evan unawares.
"Wow!" he shouted, rubbing the top of his head.
The girl laughed until she was ashamed of herself; then hid her face and started to run off.
"Don't go 'way, Lily," he called; "I want to say something to you."
She stopped, and eyed him suspiciously.
"What is it, Mr. Nelson?"
"Come here and I'll tell you."
She ventured near.
"Won't you stay a while?" he said, turning his eyes on hers. "I can't empty it all out in a minute, you know."
"Is it important?" asked Lily, slyly.
"Sure," he laughed; "I wouldn't waste your valuable time if it weren't."
She pouted.
"You think I have nothing to do, I suppose, Mr. Nelson!"
Evan was Mr. to her chiefly because he was a bankclerk.
"Oh no, not that. But you don't seem to be cut out for a post-office ornament. Do you ever feel dissatisfied here?"
"Why?"
"I was just wondering—I'm beginning to get sick of it myself."
She laughed.
"So am I," she said; "and it's my home, too."
She had settled down on the grass, and her eyes were on a level with the bankclerk's.
"Still you'll likely settle down here and get married at last," said Evan, soberly.
"No chance,"—haughtily. "Do you think I would have one of these dubs around here?"
"What's the matter with them?"
"Oh, they're slow. When I get married I'm going to have a smart, up-to-date fellow."
Evan had a smile ready for her when she looked at him. She colored radiantly.
"I must go," she said, rising, and skipped away, not to be stopped this time.
A few minutes later the acting-manager came out with a highly illustrated magazine.
"Say, Bo," he yawned, "things are getting pretty thick. You can't do much on that $250, you know."
Evan laughed.
"A bank fellow's not in much danger," he said.
"No," replied Dunn, "but what about the girl?"
Nelson revolved the remark in his mind a while. He decided he would not be so friendly with Lily from that time on.
"It's funny," observed Dunn, again, "how village girls fall for a bankclerk—when we are made of the very stuff their own brothers are made of. Most of us came from a farm or a village. The bank has fitted us out with a shine and a shave, also has made us more useless year after year, and when we degenerate sufficiently the girls begin to adore us. I used to correspond with ten girls in different towns, regularly."
A strange feature of banking life, and which goes to emphasize the peculiar fascination of it, is that every man knows he is degenerating and understands why, but he seldom does anything about it. He sails carelessly along with Ulysses' crew, enjoying the voyage as much as possible, and worrying not about a landing.
"Still you wouldn't be anything but a banker, would you?" asked Nelson.
"I couldn't if I would," said Dunn, lazily; "I've been at it eight years. That's all I know."
"Well, supposing you were back on my salary, do you think you would stay in the bank?"
"I suppose so," answered the other; "I was on $250 once, and I didn't quit."
Dunn's indifferent contentment had considerable influence over Nelson. It caused the junior man to severely criticize his own restlessness. One of the acting-manager's slogans was about the rolling stone and the moss. The effect of that obsolete aphorism on moss-backs is pitiful. It impressed Evan, not because of his mossiness altogether, but because of his youth, and of youth's anxiety to make good. The lad of eighteen had an example of banking in his manager, Dunn, but his eyes were not yet opened. He could see the $75 a month very plainly, but he could not comprehend the eight long years of service that had made Dunn's salary what it was—and that had made him the laggard he was. Dunn had not entirely lost ambition, any more than a hundred Dunns in every bank to-day have lost it; but eight years' specialty service makes a young man useless for anything else but his specialty, and when he does muster enough strength to sit up in the bed he has made, he sinks back on the pillow again, exhausted, because of the weight on his chest.
But Dunn's predicament was, chiefly, Dunn's lookout—and, to some extent, the lookout of tradition-bound relatives. Had he been an exceptional man his attitude toward the business would have been different, and Evan, in the beginning of his awakening, would probably have benefited by contact with him. As it was, Evan scolded his complaining brain and forced it back into bed, as a mother does her baby; in fact, it is to be feared he gave it a dose of soothing-syrup, too.
The Hometon boy actually saved a little on his five dollars per week. The manager frequently borrowed a dollar or two from him. But Evan had not yet paid back the money his father had given him—George Nelson warned him not to try.
"Keep it, my boy," he wrote, "and start an account. Try and put away a certain amount each week." This sentence was stroked out, vetoed by saner afterthought. The father doubtless realized the absurdity of asking a young man away from home earning five dollars a week to save. "Keep yourself if possible," said the letter, "on the salary you draw; but if you run shy I am always ready to help you out." Evan thought of his tailor's bill, and decided to pay it before settling with his father.
Among the great economists at the head of the Canadian banking business there are some who seem to make a specialty of the following sermon to employes: "It matters not what you make, you can always save something." Sure! You can steer clear of a young lady on the street in case you might have to buy her an ice-cream, and you can always raise a headache on garden-party or picnic nights. The class of economists mentioned seem unable to realize that a man, young or old, is worth his salt, if he works honestly, whether he be a sewer-digger or a clerk who spends half his income on laundry.
Sometimes not only dissatisfaction but resentment took possession of Nelson. He was, in the first place, obliged to go where the bank sent him; and in the second place, to take what the bank gave him. He would receive a certain increase yearly, no matter where or what he was in the business—and the Bonehead (wherever he was) would get the same or better. Discrimination according to ability was unknown in banking—except on reports: and there it was a joke to every man in the service.
But youth is very pliant. Employers of young men are familiar with the fact. Something always came along to quiet Evan's mind before he had gone so far as to write an "indiscreet" letter to head office. What a grand thing it is to be discreet! Why was mention of this attribute, discretion, omitted from the Apostle's list? What anxiety and sorrow possession of this virtue would save us—and what enlightenment! .... Had Evan written an impulsive letter to head office he would have been ousted from the bank; he would very likely have been metaphorically kicked out. The kick would have hurt for a while, but not like the sting that must burn later on. Yet, how was he to foresee that which was coming? He might have estimated his chances by the experience of others; but boys, like young nations, do not suffer themselves to be guided in that way.
The excitement of saving money, as much as anything, now held Evan to his desk. He was putting away a dollar weekly. By Thanksgiving he would be able to take a trip home, and incidentally make his mother a present of the turkey for dinner. If the gobbler Evan plotted against could only have known how safe his neck was he would have put all the roosters in the barnyard out of business, and whetted his bill for the drake. A calamity was destined to befall the young Creek Bend teller; yet, viewed from the standpoint of its frequency in the business, this "calamity" deserved only the name of a "professional accident"—for which there is no provision made in the Rules and Regulations. It happened in this wise:
A black-whiskered man came in, accompanied by the village hotel-keeper, with a cheque to be cashed. It was "marked good" by a bank in London, Ontario. Evan paid it without showing it to the manager. Dunn saw it afterwards and let it pass for seventy dollars, the amount the customer received. The figures were a compromise between $20 and $70, but the "body" of the cheque (what a teller goes by) looked very much like Seventy. Evan thought no more about the strange-looking customer whom the hotel-keeper had identified, until the cheque came back from London, with the following memo: "This was marked for Twenty Dollars only."
The teller rushed out to the hotel and asked about the man of beard. The hotel-keeper said he only knew him as an occasional drinker; and because the hotel-keeper had not endorsed the cheque and needed no loan from the bank, he waxed impolite. Evan gathered that the shark had left town and would not be back.
Dunn, although he had not had the matter referred to him, felt sorry for Nelson and comforted him with the offer to pay half.
"I would have cashed it myself for seventy," he said.
Evan was in the depths.
"Do you think head office would let us debit it to charges?" he asked hopelessly.
The manager looked at him in dismay.
"My dear boy," he smiled, "they would almost fire you for suggesting such a thing. I tried that once and they wrote back telling me to be more careful, and insinuating that no good clerk need lose money on the cash. Never look to them for sympathy, because you won't get it."
Nelson swallowed a lump and drew a cheque on his account for all he had—$22. He thought it very decent of Dunn to make up half the shortage—and it was. The acting-manager was a good sport—too good for his own good. Evan figured that the Mt. Alban tailor would have to wait.
Mrs. Nelson was advised by letter that "seeing there are only two of us running this branch, and the manager wants to go to Toronto for the holiday, we have decided that I must stay. I'm very sorry, mother—but it won't be long till Christmas."
There was truth in the manager's wanting to go away for the holiday: Evan encouraged him in the desire, because he wanted to express appreciation of Dunn's kindness in putting up $25 of the loss.
The manager left his "combination" in an envelope in case he should miss a train back, and Evan was entrusted with several thousand dollars in cash. Dunn left at noon Saturday and would be gone until ten o'clock Monday morning.
"Don't run off with the safe," he laughed as he said good-bye.
"No, I'll only take the contents," answered Evan, cheerily.
But he felt not the least bit cheery. He thought of the last Thanksgiving spent in Hometon, of mother, sister and Frankie—and the dinner. It must be confessed that, in his memory, the dinner shared with Frankie.
If Evan had been crooked, instead of turkey-dressing and home-scenes he would have been thinking of the money within his grasp. As it was, the filthy lucre never entered his head. He did think of the double responsibility, and it made him proud; but that was the extent of his money speculations.
While he sat in the acting-manager's chair dreaming of home and wondering why he had not written Frankie a letter this week, a gentle tap came to the front door of the bank, which was always locked at noon on Saturdays. Evan peeked out to ascertain whether or not it was a customer who could be avoided. A bright eye met the bare spot in the frosted glass he was utilizing, and with a laugh he opened the door.
"Mr. Nelson," said Lily, blushing; "I beg your pardon, but could you let me have a little mucilage?"
"Sure," he said; "come in. We'll have to shut the door or some gink will be coming along for a loan."
Lily hesitated a moment, but seeing no way out finally entered. Evan went behind his desk to get the mucilage. While he was rummaging there another rap came to the door, and Lily peered out.
"It's a farmer," she whispered, running back to where Evan was.
"Don't let him know we're here then," said the clerk; "I can't open up for him."
The disappointed customer hung around, hoping, no doubt, to be humored, as he had often been. Nelson and the young girl from the post-office stood behind a high desk waiting for the intruder to leave.
"Just think," whispered Lily, "what the gossips of this town would say if they knew—"
"They won't know," said Evan, reassuringly.
"It would hurt your business, Mr. Nelson, wouldn't it?"
The sweet face was turned up to him. There was the confidence of innocence in her eyes. Fate had denied the lonely bankclerk a trip home, but it had placed a pair of baby lips within easy reach. He gazed, flushed—and kissed Lily. She trembled and the tears came into her blue eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Nelson!" she cried, crimson with excitement and pleasure.
He drew away, feeling ashamed and guilty. His embarrassment was ten-fold greater than the girl's: she was acting consistently with her childish fancies of the past few months, while Evan was betraying a girl in Hometon.
Beginning to realize the futility of waiting at the bank door, the farmer dragged himself away, muttering anathemas on high collars and patent locks.
"Here's your mucilage," said Evan, handing Lily a small bottle. "Don't get it on your clothes."
He uttered the last sentence for want of something to say.
"You must think I'm a regular baby," she replied, with a touch of scorn. When a young girl has just been kissed by a young man she wants him to understand she is a woman, full-grown.
Evan laughed and said she was anything but a baby.
That afternoon a letter arrived, by stage mail, from Frankie Arling. It was another of her school compositions.