USUALLY Mr. Quinby came home from the store by half-past nine. To-night the clock was almost at eleven before his latchkey sounded in the lock. Mrs. Quinby, who had been waiting in the dining room, went forward to meet him.
There were tired lines about the man's face, and stern lines about his mouth. "Does Bert know about Bill Harrison?" he asked.
"Yes. Dolf Muller came here. Dolf was almost hysterical."
"Humph! Too late for that now. I waited until Dr. Elman got back. Bill's leg is off above the knee. Elman says he stood the shock well. And if Glynn hadn't told me to-night what was going on, it might just as well have been Bert instead of Bill. I'm going to talk to that young man."
"Harry." Her hand stayed him. "Don't be harsh with Bert. He's promised me that he'll never go to the yards again."
"Humph! Ready to promise anything after the damage is done."
"No," said Mrs. Quinby. "He promised me before he knew that Bill had been hurt."
"That changes things a bit," Mr. Quinby said after a moment. The lines about his mouth had lost their iron. "That's the worst of kids; they never see the next minute or the next hour. That boy in the hospital is handicapped for life. Is Bert still up?"
"I don't know."
"I'll see."
Bert, still lying across the bed, started upright as the door opened and his father came into the room. His eyes asked a bleak question: "What are you going to do to me?" Something deep in the man softened at the boy's stricken attitude.
"Bert," he said gently, "I'm not going to scold. I guess you've learned your lesson. Thank God, you didn't have to learn it as Bill learned his."
The worry that had weighed down the boy for hours broke from him in confession, drawn out by his father's unexpected sympathy.
"It's my fault," he choked, "that Bill's leg is gone. I was the one to talk of jumping trains. He'd never have thought of it if it wasn't for me."
In an instant Mr. Quinby had his hand on the boy's knee. "You, mustn't let this prey on your mind. Blaming yourself won't give Bill back his leg. None of you stopped to count the cost—and Bill paid. It might just as well have been you or Dolf. After this, whenever you start on a new adventure, ask yourself: 'Is this wise, and would I tell about it at home?' That sort of questioning will keep you out of a lot of trouble."
Yet the boy's face remained glum. The man saw that he must rouse him from his depression. The accordion was where Bert had laid it at Dolf's coming. Mr. Quinby picked it up and inserted his hands in the straps.
"I used to be able to tease one of these things," he announced. "Didn't know that, did you? What will you have? Call your tune."
Bert showed a spark of interest. "Can you play 'Turkey in the Straw?'"
"I could—once," said the man, and began to pick out the melody.
"Must have been a long time ago," said Bert, and gave a half-hearted grin.
Mr. Quinby settled back and warmed up to his work. His fingers began to find the keys. Mrs. Quinby came upstairs and stood in the doorway.
"It's late," she reminded him. "You'll have the neighbors throwing shoes in the window."
"Not if they know good music," Mr. Quinby chuckled.
"Huh!" said Bert. "Call that music?"
Mr. Quinby gave the accordion an extra flourish. "How's that?"
"Fierce," said the boy.
His father threw back his head and sang:
Turkey in the straw;
Funniest thing I ever saw,
They just played the same old time and danced
Turkey in the straw.
"It sounds better when you just play the music," Bert said, and laughed at his father's look of comic dismay. As for Mr. Quinby, he had succeeded in arousing the boy's spirits and he put the instrument down. Bert walked over to the window. The rain had ceased, the stars were out, and the night seemed to hold a greater peace.
All the boy's interests for the next five days centered on a doctor's house set down among towering maple trees in the heart of the town. He found that each morning Dr. Elman motored to the hospital. Leaning against the trunk of one of the trees he would watch the road and wait; sometimes on a rising tide of hope, sometimes in the cold clutch of a great fear. Usually, about noon, the doctor's dusty car would roll up to the curb and stop. Bert, edging away from the tree, would grip his courage as the man came up the walk.
"How's Bill?" he would ask.
"He's holding his own," the doctor would answer. He was a gruff man, not given to wasting words.
On the sixth day the report varied.
"He'll pull through," Dr. Elman said. "Youth—good constitution."
"He'll pull through!" Then all those other reports had meant that there was danger that Bill, the whimsical, the droll, would sink away into the Great Silence. Bert stood there motionless near the tree for many minutes.
A week later his father brought home momentous news.
"If you and Dolf want to see Bill, Dr. Elman will take you to the hospital to-morrow. Be at his office no later than nine o'clock."
Bert was waiting at his old tree twenty minutes before the time, and Dolf arrived shortly afterwards, looking as though he had been squeezed and pushed into his carefully brushed clothes. They stood around and watched the house. By and by Dr. Elman appeared, opened the garage doors, and backed the car down toward them.
"Rear seat," he said. "Don't touch that bag on the floor. Valuable instruments."
On any other occasion they would have enjoyed this ride through a fair country blooming under the touch of spring. They talked in hushed tones until they came to the city, and then their voices ceased entirely. Through a traffic maze of lurching trucks, clanging trolleys and speeding automobiles Dr. Elman wormed his car until at last it swung up a wide concrete driveway to a cool-looking building of gray stone.
"The hospital," Dolf said in an awed whisper.
They followed the doctor inside, walking close together as though seeking mutual courage. Their nostrils quivered to a combined odor of ether and iodoform—an odor that, once inhaled, is forever afterwards known as the hospital smell. Nurses in crisp, starched uniforms swished past them on noiseless feet. An attendant wheeled a stretcher bed down a corridor. They looked about them with apprehensive attention and kept at Dr. Elman's heels, up to the second floor and into a room.
"Hello, Bill," said the doctor; and now, all at once, his voice was gentle as a woman's.
A head moved on a pillow. Tired eyes lighted with a spark of interest.
"Hello, fellows," said a wan voice.
So this was Bill—this white, pinched face. Bert stared at the bed in fearsome fascination. The coverlet showed the outline of one full leg, and another outline that ended with awful suddenness.
"Come," said Dr. Elman; "let Bill get a good look at you. Sit down."
"Better not do it, Dolf," Bill said with just a trace of the old drawl. "You'll burst something sure."
Dolf grinned sheepishly. Bert felt the doctor's elbow in his ribs, saw the man's exasperated frown, and tore his eyes away from the bed and its mute story.
The conversation ran in spurts. Bill did not say much; he seemed too weary for the effort of sustained talk. But he was enjoying their visit. Shadows of smiles ran across his mouth at some of Dolf's recitals of what was going on in Springham. When Bert spoke of their class in the school, and of the coming graduation, he looked at him but did not seem to see him. A nurse came in, busied herself with his pulse and temperature, called him "Old Warrior," smoothed his pillow and departed. Dr. Elman looked at his watch.
"Got to go, Bill," he said, with the same gentleness. "You're not the only chap in the world calling for a doctor."
They stood up to leave. Dolf and the man went through the doorway, and Bert took a quick step back toward the bed.
"I didn't quit that night," he said. "Policeman Glynn told my father. I was kept in."
Bill stared steadily up at the ceiling. "I wish I had been," he answered.
Bert went away with the feeling that, at the last moment, he had said the wrong thing.
The ride back to Springham was as silent as the ride out had been. Dr. Elman had some town visits to make, and they left his car on a Washington Avenue corner. Peg Scudder, sunning himself in his sidewalk chair, stuck a crutch under one armpit, pulled himself erect, and hobbled toward them.
"Hey, you!" he roared. "Blast your hides, what's your hurry? Been up to the hospital to see that fellow that got clipped?"
Bert was a year older and had lost much of his fear of that powerful body and tawny head. Yet he shrank away as the man came too close.
"We just got back," said Dolf.
"When you go back again, just pass him the word to come and see Peg Scudder. Us one-leggers ought to stick together."
"I'll tell him, Mr. Scudder," said Dolf, and Peg leered through his tangle of hair. It wasn't every day in the week that some one honored him with the title of mister.
A month later Bill Harrison came back to Springham. Bert had prepared himself for the crutch; but the sight of his friend pegging along the street was a hard shock. Examination days came and went, and Bert learned that he had passed and had qualified for the Springham High School. The afternoon of graduation day he spent with Bill.
"I'll have to take my eighth grade over again," Bill said listlessly, and moved his stump of leg. "That's one year this thing has cost me already."
All during the graduation exercises Bert sat on the auditorium platform and thought of a boy who should have been there. But next day and in the days that followed, this thought was dulled. There was much to be done that summer. His father's business, after a disappointing start, and months of uncertainty, was at last coming into its own. This dawn of prosperity was reflected in many ways. More stock came in; there were orders to deliver. He was kept, it seemed, in a ferment of industry—polishing the glass of the show cases, dusting the shelves, and from day to day unpacking shipments and putting them away. Every so often he went to the bank, and the sum of his money on deposit grew. From time to time he caught glimpses of Old Man Clud, but their paths did not cross and they held no speech.
After a month the work began to pall on him, and he chafed at the periods that confined him to the store. Dolf Muller worked only on Saturdays in his father's shop. Bill Harrison, with his one leg, was loafing away the summer. Bert began to feel cheated out of good times. Turning his complaint in his mind, he decided that his weekly allowance was too small.
"One dollar doesn't seem so much when you've worked all week for it," he told his father the next Saturday.
Mr. Quinby, busy, missed the shot, and the boy went home with the dollar in his pocket. For the first time it seemed an insignificant sum.
The incident lingered in his mind. He took to muttering to himself, and his thoughts grew sulky and obstinate. And then the same accordion that had brought him and his father so close the night of Bill's accident, sent them as far apart as they had been before.
Why Bert brought the instrument to the store he did not know. Perhaps he had some random feeling that it would soothe tedious hours; perhaps an unconscious wish for some of the glamour he had found at home behind the locked door of his room. Mr. Quinby, with a note falling due, went across the street to the bank, and Bert was left alone.
His father's absence grew prolonged; no customers came, and the boy began to yawn. In this idle moment he took the instrument out from under a counter and began to toy with its keys. At first the melody he essayed was subdued. Gradually, under the spell of enchantment, he lost all sense of time and of place. The notes grew clearer, louder. He closed one eye, cocked his head to one side, and surrendered himself to rhythm and played with happy abandon.
A voice of steel brought him back to earth.
"Bert!"
His father, striding into the store through a knot of small boys who blocked the entrance, brought the music to an abrupt end. The small boys lingered, hoping the entertainment would be renewed.
"I thought I could step out for a moment without having you turn the place into a side show," Mr. Quinby said abruptly. "How do you think it looks to have a boy sawing away on an accordion in a first-class store and congregating a crowd of dirty-faced children? Do you think it's businesslike?"
Bert had reddened. "I . . . I just got playing, and then I forgot."
"Forgetting doesn't help a business. Put that thing away. I'll take it home to-night."
"I'll take it home now," Bert said. He ate a moody supper. He did not tell his mother what had happened, but she, accustomed to his mercurial spells of good temper and bad, knew that something had gone amiss. That night she questioned her husband.
"Bert has a bee buzzing him," she said, "and by all the signs I think it's stinging. Did anything happen at the store?"
Mr. Quinby explained the transgression and was surprised to find that, after a few hours, it had lost a bit of its heinous aspect. Mrs. Quinby looked thoughtful.
"Of course he didn't think," she said. "You can't put an old head on fifteen-year-old shoulders. When Bert explained that he had forgotten, it was his way of saying he was sorry. You know Bert. If he thinks he's making amends and is rebuffed, up bobs that distressing pig-headedness and you can't move him."
"I guess you're right," the man said ruefully. "I seem to have a genius for rubbing that lad the wrong way. I was angry. You'd have been angry, too."
"I know." She was silent a moment. "He's worked hard this summer."
Mr. Quinby nodded. "Maybe I ought to jump his allowance. That would cheer him up."
"Perhaps. . . ." Mrs. Quinby hesitated. "Perhaps it would be better if you gave him a hint that you didn't mean to be so sharp. . . ."
"Good Heavens! Do I have to apologize to my own son? It isn't as bad as that, is it?" Mr. Quinby laughed. "He'll be the happiest kid in Springham when he gets two dollars next Saturday instead of the one he expects."
But Bert showed no particular emotion. He counted the money, counted it again to make sure he had not made a mistake, said a short "Thank you," and was gone. A week ago the increase would have fluttered his heart.
"I can't make head nor tail of that boy," Mr. Quinby complained to his wife that night. "At his age I'd have thought twenty-five cents a fortune. He took the two dollars as casually as though he could pick notes off the sidewalk any time he wanted to bend his head. What's getting into the boys of to-day?"
Mrs. Quinby said nothing. She felt that a word of regret would have accomplished more. She knew the boy.
And so the summer ran to its end, and the school reopened, and Bert went off with Dolf one fine morning to begin his life at Springham High. Bill Harrison, so expert now that he needed only one crutch, tapped his way to the grammar school to once more begin the eighth grade.
For Bert high school opened the doors to a new and a wondrous world. Study periods wore the gloss of novelty and had an enticing appeal, particularly as they promised to shorten the hours he would need to spend with his books at home. Reporting to different rooms for different periods gave him a sense of importance and a feeling of maturity; nor was this new dignity lessened by the first mass meeting of students in the auditorium where the faculty coach and the captains of the baseball, football and basket ball teams all made speeches. He joined the Athletic Association and found that there were many school clubs and societies that promised companionship and diversion. High school, he decided, was going to be distinctly worth while.
And then it occurred to him that, though he might enroll himself with many school organizations, he could never be sure of free time in which to attend the meetings. He still had his tasks at the store, and his hours were uncertain. Some afternoons there was much to do; some afternoons there was nothing. As a matter of fact scarcely one of the societies interested him—high school life was too new for him to have yet selected avenues of fancy—but he figured himself barred and was correspondingly resentful. He grew to hate the sight of bundles and packages.
"I'm a slave," he confided darkly to Bill Harrison.
"Oh, rats!" Bill said impatiently. "You've got two legs and Peg Scudder doesn't pester you every time he meets you."
Bert had football, too, had he stopped to count his assets. Not that he turned out for the football team—he was too young and too light. But here time was elastic. If he came to the field at three-thirty o'clock, practice or game was ready to start. If he did not arrive until four o'clock or later, practice or game was still here. In spite of his gloomy view of his situation he enjoyed many rousing afternoons, and even achieved two trips with the eleven to see it play out-of-town games.
Winter came, held Springham in bonds of ice, and by and by began to release the cold strangle of its grip. On a day of thaw when melting ice dripped steadily from every tree and bush and house roof, and when running snow water slushed in the street gutters, Dolf met Bert in the main corridor of the school.
"The moving picture screen is up in the auditorium," he announced.
Bert made a wry face. "Another lecture. Don't they ever get tired having a lot of old windbags tell us how to clean our teeth, and how to cross the street safely, and how to stand straight?"
"This fellow's going to talk about butterflies."
Butterflies! It couldn't be worse. Bert threw up his hands in a gesture of tragic resignation and went along the corridor to his first period room.
An hour later an alarm of bells in the halls summoned the students to the auditorium. Bert went in with his class, settled into his seat, and gazed at the stage with an air that said, "You can't make me like this talk." In front of the screen a man whom he had never seen before sat talking to the principal. He was a tall man, loosely hung together, and he wore heavy, prominent, shellrimmed glasses.
"I know that kind," Bert decided. "He talks through his nose."
The last of the students entered, the doors were closed, the orchestra leader tapped twice with his baton, and the music ceased. The principal stood up, and began to talk, but Bert paid no heed. He heard the name "Thomas Woods," a burst of applause, and then the stranger was on his feet walking down to the footlights, looking even more awkward now than when he had been seated.
"They call me," he said, "'the Butterfly Man.' Some of you may be wondering why a fellow as big as I am doesn't tackle somebody his size, and not be pestering a little butterfly. Well, that goes to show that you don't know much about butterflies. You go chasing one of those beauties, and the first thing you know he has you in the brush, and then you get into some briars, and after a while you come out and look at yourself and you wonder whether you dressed yourself that morning or whether that was all the trousers you had on when you started out. Many a time I've felt like taking a handkerchief out of my pocket, and waving it at a butterfly, and telling him that I'd sign a peace treaty if he'd only show me how to get out of there."
At least, Bert admitted grudgingly, this Butterfly Man did not talk through his nose. The auditorium was laughing; it had been won; but Bert refused to unbend. He began to whisper to Dolf.
"Shut up," Dolf said shortly. "I want to hear this."
Bert retired into himself and refused to pay attention to the address. Presently the lights snapped out, a moving picture machine began to grind with a soft whirr, and a butterfly, fluttering gorgeous wings, appeared upon the screen. This, at least, was interesting, and for fifteen minutes Bert watched pictures of the insects come and go. Then the lights were on again, the pictures were done, and the talk was ended. At that moment Bert began to suspect that he had cheated himself out of something good—but it was too late. His mother would have understood. She had a shrewd knowledge of his mulish moments.
Spring came on the heels of the Butterfly Man's visit, and spring brought baseball. Bert turned out for the nine, and, in what time was at his disposal, practiced faithfully. Weight did not count for so much in baseball, and he thought that he might have a chance. But after a few weeks he saw that he would not make it. Day by day he got less and less of the work—more valuable material claimed the coach's attention—and at last the time came when he was not called forth at all.
It was then that class teams were organized, and he was assigned to play second base for the freshmen. This was his moment of glory, and he depended on his bicycle to make sure that the moment did not fade. Each day he brought the wheel to the school and left it at the rear of the building. As soon as classes were over for the day he made haste to reach the store, and the orders awaiting delivery were peddled madly about the town. His one thought was to finish and get back to the athletic field.
Luck was with him. Four times his team took the field to win or lose, and four times he was there to start the game. At the end of those four contests, the freshmen and the juniors were tied for first place, each team having won three games and lost one.
"And next week we play the juniors," Dolf said. "You certainly won't catch me missing that game."
Bert did not wish to miss it, either. The fate of the freshmen nine loomed in his imagination as of more importance than the success or failure of the school team. For to the school team he was a nobody, not even an unlikely substitute; while to the freshman nine he was a vital, necessary and stimulating cog. There was talk in the school that the game might settle the Class League Championship. Bert began to dream of a secondbaseman who forever stood over his bag and tagged out daring runners.
His constant hope was that, when the game came, he would find the afternoon free. But the luck that had sponsored him all season deserted him that day. A crowd was gathering on the athletic field even as classes were dismissed. He raced from the school to the store. There were no packages waiting on the far end of the counter. His heart grew light.
"Anything for me?" he called. It was merely a perfunctory question, a part of each afternoon's procedure.
"That you, Bert?" Mr. Quinby came from behind a partition at the rear of the store. "There's a suit of clothes to go to Mrs. Busher's. You know the place, on Fairmount Avenue."
Bert's face fell. Fairmount Avenue was some distance from the field. "Couldn't I deliver it before supper? We have a game to-day. . . ."
"He wants to wear it to-night; they're going into the city on the five-fifty train. Mrs. Busher telephoned that she'd wait in until you brought it."
Well, if he had to deliver it, the quicker the better. "Which one?" he asked. He was impatient to be gone.
"The tailor at the corner has it. Coat had to be pressed and the trousers shortened. He won't hold you up. He promised it for three o'clock."
Bert rode to the corner, left his wheel propped by one pedal against the curbstone, and bolted into the shop.
"You got a suit here for Mr. Quinby," he announced.
The tailor, working in his shirt sleeves, with a tape measure end falling over each shoulder, had a mild eye and an unhurried manner. "Working on it now," he said. "You're not in a hurry, are you?"
Bert groaned. A clock, ticking noisily on the wall, said twenty minutes past three. The game was to start at half-past. Of course, there was usually some delay. . . .
"I'm in a terrible hurry," he said. "Got to get back to the school. Rush it, won't you?"
"Sure, sure. Why didn't somebody say this was a rush job?"
"It was marked for three o'clock."
"It isn't much after three. Don't crowd me now; it makes me nervous. I'll rush it, but don't crowd me."
Yet, for all the tailor's protestations of speed, his motions were leisurely, for he was a2 man not given to the excitement of haste. The hands of the clock crept around—twenty-five after, half-past, twenty-five minutes of four.
"There," said the tailor, "that's done, and no thanks to your fidgeting. Now to wrap paper around it and tie it. . . . Hey! It isn't tied. You'll be losing the vest or something and. . . ."
But Bert was gone. One instant of getting set in the saddle, and then he was off, dodging recklessly through the traffic of Washington Avenue. Twice he turned corners at a pace that held the bicycle at a perilous angle. Arrived at his Fairmount Avenue destination he did not bother this time to prop the wheel against the curb, but let it fall as he stepped from it. He ran up the walk to the house, and pressed hard on the button of the electric bell.
No answer. Time was flying. He rang the bell again, and then hastened to the rear of the house. There was no bell here, so he rapped with his knuckles against the glass of a kitchen window.
"Boy! Boy!"
He located the call. It came from a woman leaning out an upstairs window of a house two doors above.
"Are you looking for Mrs. Busher?"
"Yes'm."
"I saw her go out about half an hour ago."
So this time that he had had to give had been wasted, after all. A tide of anger rose in him and the hot fever of it dried and choked his throat. He righted the bicycle, kicked a toe-clip into place, and rode back to the store. A clock in a jeweler's window told him that it was five minutes past four. His father was out on the sidewalk scanning: the street.
"You'll have to go back," he said. "Mrs. Busher just 'phoned. She said she had stepped out for a moment."
Bert looked straight ahead with a hard stare.
"Can't be helped," his father said. "I'm sorry; it's one of the things that thoughtless persons inflict upon business men. Hurry and you may be in time for your game. You needn't come back here. Go right to the field."
So the boy rode again to Fairmount Avenue. He rang the bell, and then rang again, holding his finger on the button. Footsteps sounded within the house. Even his inexperienced ears, reading the sound, could tell that it indicated outraged dignity. The door was thrown open and he was confronted by Mrs. Busher.
"Must you tear down my house," she demanded, "because I do not drop everything and run when you ring? What do you mean by such conduct?"
"I was here before and nobody answered," he said darkly.
"Oh, you were?" Her tone was sarcastic. "And must I ask every tradesman's boy whether I can step out of my own house? If I were not a friend of your mother's I would march that suit right back. How dare you be impertinent? Your father will hear of this. Mark me!"
Bert gave not the slightest thought to her threat as he rode out of Fairmount Avenue. When he reached the field the fifth inning was on, the juniors led, 8 runs to 5, and another boy was playing in his place. He found Dolf and Bill Harrison together and sat down beside them. He was full of his grievance and explained the run of circumstances that had barred him from the game.
"Mrs. Busher!" said Bill, and shook his head. "She deals at our store. She's a Tartar."
Bert sat and watched the progress of the game. The juniors continued to score, and the contest lost interest. A magazine stuck out of Dolf's pocket, and he reached for it. The magazine was devoted to business, and in one column he found a short article that caught his wandering attention:
Selling Umbrellas
The Star Dry Goods Company hung an open umbrella in a show window, played water over it from a stationary hose, and demonstrated the rain-shedding qualities of the article. Umbrella sales showed a 200 per cent increase that week.
The game ended, the victorious juniors cheered the crestfallen freshmen, and the crowd broke up. Bert gave the magazine back to Dolf. A picture of the umbrella, hanging with the water cascading from it, lingered in his imagination. It had the thrilling qualities of a stunt, and he wondered how the spectacle would look in his father's window.
"What's the matter?" Bill Harrison asked. "You don't look so much like a sour pickle now."
"Oh, what difference does it make if I missed the game?" Bert answered. It was one of the sudden transformations of mood that happen to boys. Umbrella and hose! And maybe twenty-five pounds of sugar under the umbrella to show that no water was coming through. He was sure that that would make people stop and stare. It had the appeal of a circus.
He was upstairs, washing, when his father came home for the evening meal. A word reached his ears, and he paused with his face half-dried. That word had been "Busher."
"Sure," he muttered. "She can make me go back twice, but it's a crime if I ring her bell so she'll hurry." He snapped the towel back on its rack and came downstairs with smoldering eyes.
"What happened at Mrs. Busher's to-day?" his father asked with ominous quietness.
"She gave me fits."
"For pounding at her bell?"
"I didn't pound. I just rang it so she'd hurry."
"She says you were impertinent."
"I wasn't." Bert's denial was made indignantly. "She lit into me and I said she wasn't there when I came before. Maybe she wouldn't be there the second time. How was I to know? Anyway, she's always grouching about something. . . ."
"That will do," his father cried. "Don't you know, haven't you learned, that a business man must please his customers? He's got to give service; if he doesn't give it somebody else does. Mrs. Busher told me she was of a mind to take her trade elsewhere. Do you imagine that customers are so easy to get that I can afford to throw away the ones I have? I've been watching you, Bert. I don't like the way you come to the store and sulk if there's anything for you to do. How do I know how many people you've treated as you've treated Mrs. Busher to-day? I see now that there's only one thing for me to do. I'll put an ad in the paper to-morrow and advertise for a clerk. I suppose I'll have to pay him fifteen a week, but that shouldn't worry you . . . and it probably will not. You'll have your afternoons free for your games."
Part of the climax of that speech startled Bert. He said the most unfortunate thing he could have said.
"Fifteen dollars a week! Why, I got only two dollars."
"Must I pay my own son dollar for dollar to help me as though he were a stranger?" Mr. Quinby asked bitterly.
Supper that night was something of a strained meal, with Mrs. Quinby trying to maintain a flow of conversation and Bert silent in his chair. The boy had not meant to imply that he should have been paid more, but that fifteen dollars was too much for a clerk. Ordinarily, if he were misjudged, he sulked into injured dignity; but the thought of the fifteen dollars appalled him and urged him to make clear his position. Twice he prepared to speak, but each time a look at his father's face stopped him. His father was in no mood for explanations.
"Mother," he said that night when they were alone, "I didn't mean it that way." He felt confidence in speaking to her.
"Why didn't you say so?" she asked.
He looked down at the floor and made no answer.
"Your father has worries, Bert, that you know nothing of," she said gently. "He'll realize when he thinks it over that you didn't mean it that way."
The boy was comforted. Later, working in his room on his studies, he suddenly sat bolt upright. The umbrellas! If he told his father about that idea wouldn't it show that his thoughts had not been as selfish as his father had believed? He pictured his triumphant telling of the plan, visioned his father's face alight with interest, and forgot his books entirely in his happy anticipation of the climax.
He did not speak of the subject until morning. After breakfast he followed his father out into the hall.
"I read something in a magazine about a dandy way to sell umbrellas," he began eagerly. "You hang an umbrella in the window, and have water from a hose pouring over it. And you can put sugar under the umbrella to show how dry the umbrella keeps things, and. . . ."
"Becoming suddenly interested in the business, aren't you?" Mr. Quinby broke in.
"Why . . . why. . . ." Bert had not expected such a question. His mind, set on the tale he had to tell, could not shift with adroitness to explanation.
"Humph! Beginning to worry about the two dollars you'll miss each Saturday," his father said and took his hat and went out. He was a man disappointed in his son, and his disappointment had blinded him. He did not understand.