THE new clerk's name was Samuel Sickles. Saturday week the five-forty train from the city dropped him off at the Springham station—a neat, well-brushed, alert young man of nineteen who was labeled "strictly business." He came to the store, introduced himself to Mr. Quinby, and set out forthwith to find lodgings. By nine o'clock he had engaged room and board with a family living not far from Washington Avenue, and had left a notice at the station to have his trunk delivered. That much accomplished, he came back to the store and immediately began to look over the shelves and locate the stock.
Mr. Quinby surveyed him with something of curiosity. "Sickles," he said at length, "how did you learn that I was in need of a clerk?"
"I wrote to several wholesale houses and asked if they knew of a small, growing store in a small, growing town that might be able to use my services."
"Humph! I had an idea that you hadn't seen my ad in the Springham paper. Ordinarily the small town boy goes to the city. You left the city to come to a small town. How much were they paying you there?"
"Twenty dollars."
"And you came here for fifteen dollars. Why?"
"I can live as well here on fifteen dollars as I could in the city on twenty. I figured that this would be a better place for advancement. In the city a clerk is a small potato. In the small town he can be a real person and grow with the town. What time do we open in the morning?"
"Quarter to eight."
"Would you mind giving me a key? I'll be around about seven o'clock. If you want to get ahead you've got to get an early start. I can have everything cleaned up for the day by opening time."
Mr. Quinby gave him a key to the front door. Monday morning he swept the floor, dusted the show cases, and swept the sidewalk. When Mr. Quinby arrived he was standing with alert attention behind the counter, business from the top of his carefully brushed hair to the soles of his feet.
"Were you in the habit of sweeping the sidewalk where you worked in the city?" Mr. Quinby asked.
"No, sir." Sam seemed surprised at the question. "But I read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. He tells how he was not above wheeling his supplies through the street and so got a reputation for industry. If people see us sweeping the sidewalk every morning they'll think our store must be pretty clean inside if it's so clean outside. That's good advertising."
"Who told you it was good advertising?"
"I've been reading some advertising books."
Mr. Quinby looked the clerk over with an astounded gaze. He had never before met anybody just like him. The lad had a viewpoint beyond his years. He was like some young ow! that had grown abnormally grave and prematurely wise.
He had, it developed, made one sale that morning. A man who had left home without a handkerchief had stopped to purchase one, and had departed with two.
"I sold him," Sam explained to Mr. Quinby, "on the theory that if he forgets a handkerchief one morning he'll forget one another. So I sold him one to carry to-day, and one to leave in his desk for the next time he forgot. And while I was sweeping the sidewalk a fat man from across the street came over to talk to me. He seemed to be very curious about how I came to hold this situation. He didn't get much information out of me. People who tell all they know don't get very far in the world."
"That was Old Man Clud," Mr. Quinby said.
"What's his business?"
"He's a money lender."
Sam's tones when he answered were decisive. "He and I won't do any business. I neither lend nor borrow." When his luncheon hour came he retired to the rear of the store with a box of crackers and a bottle of milk and brought out a book. Its title was The Secrets of Business Success.
That night, at the supper table, Mr. Quinby extolled the new clerk. He was impressed with Sam's good qualities. The fifteen dollars a week no longer worried him, for he was convinced that the remarkable young man would be worth the money. And as he ceased to fret about the fifteen dollars his feelings toward his son underwent a sudden change.
"To-day I sent Sam to deliver two shirts. What do you think he did? Took along several ties and convinced the man's wife that her husband ought to wear ties that harmonized with the shirts. Gave her a neat talk on style. Sold her two. He has the best business head I've seen on a young fellow in a long time. You ought to make it a point, Bert, to get acquainted with him."
Bert made no promises. He resented the praise, probably because his own work had never been highly regarded. His imagination pictured Sam Sickles as a smirking, fawning figure with the art of draping itself ingratiatingly over a counter.
"Regular ninny," he decided, and gave the details of the newcomer to Bill Harrison and to Dolf.
"I'd keep away from him, too," Dolf agreed. "He must be a pill. My father wouldn't have a clerk like that in the bakery for five minutes."
"I don't know about that," Bill drawled. "I never heard of anybody getting fired for showing up early in the morning. Usually it's the other way around. Anyway, Dolf, your father's put up with you around, and you're no lily. You left us the wrong cake the last two Saturdays."
"Ah, you're always knocking," Dolf said resentfully. "I wouldn't go near him, Bert."
Bert didn't. The days passed in a luxury of freedom. He weathered the storm of freshman examinations and after that there were no tasks to claim his time. The hours were his. The tray had again been taken from his bicycle, and he pedaled where he would, sometimes alone, sometimes with Dolf, and sometimes with both Dolf and Bill. For Bill had learned to propel his bicycle with one leg and to carry his crutch laid across the handle bar. Now and then they brought packages of food with them and built a fire along the roadside and cooked their noonday meal, and watched Bill try to draw every insect that crossed his path. This, Bert announced, was better than working in any store.
"You bet," said Dolf, and stuffed his mouth with cake.
Bill worked the tip of his crutch into the ground. "Well," he said, "this is all right just for now, but I wouldn't want to do it as a steady thing. It would get mighty tiresome."
"What would you want to do?" Dolf asked suspiciously.
"I'd want a job. You get tired of loafing. I found that out in the hospital."
However, for the present, Bert was well-content to drink his fill from the cup of leisure. There came a day when, with the tide of adventure running strongly in his veins, he set out for the big city. It was twenty miles there, twenty miles back, but the distance did not awe him. The whole day stretched ahead. He left Springham behind and rode the wide sweep of the county highway. A summer breeze murmured past his ears; the miles came and went on his speedometer. Once he halted to rest, and then was a-wheel and on again. It seemed a pity to linger when he could be in motion.
Twelve miles out he came to a crossroads that he had never noticed before. The same itch for adventure that had urged him forth, now painted this new road with alluring possibilities. He forgot his original intention and turned into it. Travel had packed down the dirt and the going was not bad.
"If it gets bumpy," he told himself philosophically, "I can turn back and no harm done."
The road came up to the full measure of his hopes and expectations. Trees stretched out their branches to form a green dome and through this dome the sunlight fell in flickering splashes. Sumac, wild berries and sweet ferns grew along the sides. For the first mile he chanced upon no other wayfarer, and the hands that gripped the handle bars relaxed their pressure. A great and drowsy contentment settled over his mind.
From this he awoke with startled suddenness as something crashed violently through the roadside hedge. The wheel swerved as his startled senses sought to readjust themselves. One moment he had a vision of a something, large and grotesque, crossing his path; the next he was into it, and his wheel was shocked from under him, and he was tumbling in the road.
The fall did not hurt him and, as he righted himself, he saw a man sitting squat in a cloud of dust and ruefully surveying a butterfly that was leisurely disappearing behind a spread of quivering aspen branches.
"Missed him," the man said with a sigh.
Bert was indignant. "Well, you didn't miss me."
The man forgot the butterfly and stared at the boy. They made a ludicrous pair, sitting there in the road, the one dignified and grave, the other flushed and resentful. The man began to chuckle in a deep bass voice.
"Come to think of it, I didn't miss you, did I? Hurt? And by the way, you didn't miss me. We certainly made a mess of each other, didn't we? Wait until I find my glasses and I'll have a look at you."
The glasses were lying in the dust. He rescued them, polished the lens, and placed them on his nose. And then Bert knew him.
"You're the Butterfly Man," he said impulsively. "You gave a talk at our school."
"Did I? I've spouted my piece at a lot of schools. Which one is yours?"
"Springham High."
"Oh, yes. I did talk there. Is that why you ran into me and knocked me down?"
"You ran into me," Bert defended.
The man's face wreathed in a large, friendly smile. "Now, don't be shying away from your honors. Considering that I'm not the stoutest person in the world it ought to be quite a feat to hit me. However, let's see what's happened to your bicycle."
They found the wheel lying at the foot of a tree. One handlebar was bent far out of its original shape. Tom Woods surveyed the bar appreciatively.
"That," he said, "is what I call a successful wreck. If you tried it again you couldn't mash things up so well. Got a tool kit with you?"
"No, sir."
"Too bad. I feel that I ought to make amends for not having blown my horn when I came out. If you care to walk over to my place I'll see if I can make this worse than it is. It's only about half a mile. Come along. If you refuse I'll think you're still sore about that high school speech."
Bert found himself being won over completely by this likable man with the queer way of expressing himself. He felt the need of denying antagonism.
"The pictures were good," he said.
"That means the lecture was not. Well, I've suspected it for a long time. However, we've got to get this wheel fixed. I'll push it. I'm taller than you, and if it starts to get wobbly I can fall on it and fight it into submission. You never knew that a bicycle is a terrible weapon, did you? Neither did I until you assaulted me with this one."
By this time Bert had awakened to the fact that much of what the Butterfly Man said was whimsical fun. He followed him down the road until they reached a trail that ran to the right. Into this Tom Woods went, and when the trail grew rutted he stuck his shoulder through the frame of the bicycle, lifted it from the ground, and carried it. All at once the path widened, and in a cleared space Bert saw a sight that drew an involuntary cry of admiration from his lips.
"I thought that would get you," Tom Woods said, and in his voice was that which shows a man proud of his work.
Bert saw before him a cozy cabin built compactly of logs, and joined to it a florist's house of glass. But it was not alone the flowers and the shrubs under that glass that had drawn the cry from him. The glass house seemed full of butterflies, thousands of them, fluttering on graceful, gaudy, iridescent wings, a fairyland of rainbow colors in motion.
The Butterfly Man threw open the door of the cabin, and they entered. A massive stone fireplace was at one end, bookshelves stretched along a wall, and wide, roomy chairs, thrown around in a sort of orderly confusion, invited rest and serene contemplation. A center table was littered with pipes, papers, matches and ashes. Between two windows stood a small work bench, and around this stood case after case of mounted insects, their wings spread, looking for all the world as though they would come to life in a moment, break away from the pins that held them, and waft themselves about the room.
Bert wanted to linger at those cases. But Tom Woods took a handful of wrenches from the work bench, came outdoors again, and sat on the doorstep with his back against the sill. He seemed to know exactly what to do as he began to bend the handlebar back into shape. The angle was a difficult one, and half a dozen times one of the wrenches slipped. The man went on unruffled with the work.
"You don't get mad when it goes wrong, do you?" Bert asked.
The Butterfly Man shook his head. "What's the use? I've seen men curse and rant when a wrench continued to slip. There's no use in cursing at your tools. They'll do what you want them to do if you handle them correctly. You're not given to cursing, are you?"
Bert flushed. "No, sir."
"Right. Man's the only living thing in the world that does. Stupid, isn't it? Ah, now we're getting it. Another minute, sonny, and we'll have this thing right. By the way, I haven't heard your name."
"Bert Quinby."
"All right, Bert, there's your engine of destruction. Where you bound for now?"
Bert didn't know. The turn of the day's adventure had routed lesser considerations.
"Is that your lunch in that package? Some jelly sandwiches? I like homemade jelly sandwiches. Suppose you stay and eat with me. You put in your sandwiches, and I'll make coffee, broil some ham and open a can of beans. Fair enough. Now, while I'm cooking, suppose you run in to my butterfly farm and look it over. Careful of the doors. We've got to keep the beauties in their place. I like them, but not in my food."
And so Bert passed into the house of glass. It had been breath-taking as seen from the outside; it was glorious within. It seemed to him that every known butterfly in the world must be there. He was filled with a fear of hurting them, and stood motionless and feasted his eyes. Never for a moment did the movement of wings in some part of the glass house cease. The languor of their flight, the grace of their motion, the silent mystery of their flutterings from flower to flower, fascinated him and held him spellbound. Nor did he move until Tom Woods called to him from the cabin.
He found a table set for two, and the aromatic smell of coffee in the air. But it was of the butterflies the man spoke.
"Like 'em?"
"They're great," Bert said, at a loss for other words. "Do you know all about them—their names and what they like to eat—and all that?"
"I have to; it's my business." And then at the wonder reflected in the boy's face: "Every person ought to be master of something. It's his excuse for living."
They took places at the table, and the man began to serve the meal.
"You live alone, don't you?" Bert asked.
"Yes; I do," Tom Woods answered ruefully. "Isn't a man a fool to live alone?" He poured the coffee and smiled. "But I like it, and I'm never really alone when I have my pets out there. I find them good company."
They sat long at the table, for when the meal was done the Butterfly Man lighted his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, and spoke of strange things. A clock on the fireplace mantel eventually told Bert that it was time to start for home. Tom Woods walked with him as far as the road.
"Now that you've found me," he said, "come often, but don't try to kill me."
"I have a couple of friends who'd like to see this," Bert said with a question in his voice.
The man scratched his ear. "Sometimes I'm out of flour, and sometimes it's sugar, and sometimes it's coffee. I'm a bad housekeeper. I feed my butterflies better than I feed myself. How about these chaps—do they like ham and beans?"
"One of them is Dolf Muller. He's always hungry. He'll eat anything."
"Well, that simplifies things. I always manage to have ham and beans. Who's the other chap?"
"Bill Harrison. He's got only one leg."
The man's voice changed. "Handicapped before he's really started. Bring 'em around. If I'm not at home camp on the doorstep until I get back. It's a good doorstep for loafing. I've tried it."
Bert rode back to Springham the bearer of momentous tidings. Suddenly in a world of commonplace events he had found an oasis of enchantment dominated by a man whose quizzical utterances piqued his interest and flamed his curiosity. Supper was already under way when he reached home. His mother asked him anxiously where he had been, and his father reproved him sharply for his tardiness. He slid into his seat, and busied himself with knife and fork, and within the hour was out of the house again to hunt up Dolf and Bill.
He found them and related a breathless story of the day's events. Their reactions were characteristic.
"I hope he gives us something good to eat the day we go there," said Dolf.
Bill Harrison's smile was a bit dreamy. "I'd like to meet that Butterfly Man," he said.
Five days later they rode slowly out of Springham, their rate of progress stayed by the necessity of holding back for Bill. The morning was hot and sultry, and after five miles Dolf began to grumble and to ask if they were ever going to get there.
"Perhaps," Bill said, "if Dolf speaks about it the Butterfly Man will move his place nearer town. It's a darn shame to ask Dolf to work himself into a sweat."
"Ah, shut up!" Dolf growled; but thereafter he rode without complaint.
They came at last to the dirt road, and turned in. Soon they were at the trail. The three dismounted and Bert saw that Bill's leg, as he stood beside his wheel, trembled with weariness.
"Where is this place?" Dolf asked impatiently.
"Another two minutes," Bert said, and took Bill's bicycle. "I can push both yours and mine." Bill flashed him a smile, stuck the crutch under his arm, and hobbled along the trail.
And so they came out into the clearing and advanced toward the cabin and the house of glass. Tom Woods sat on the doorstep smoking his pipe and mending a butterfly net. He took the pipe from his mouth and waved it above his head.
"Welcome!" he called. "The assassin arrives with his fellow conspirators. Advance, friends, and give the countersign."
"This fellow's Dolf Muller," said Bert.
The Butterfly Man held out his hand in greeting; but his eyes were on a boy and his crutch.
"My name's Bill Harrison," said the boy.
This time the handshake lasted for almost a full minute.
"Making the grade?" the man asked. It was a cryptic question, but Bill seemed to understand it.
"Trying to carry the ball," he answered.
The ghost of a smile came into the man's eyes. "Bill," he said softly, "I think you and I are going to hit it off."
He led the way into the cabin, and set down the butterfly net in a corner. Bill stopped at the specimen cases, but Dolf's eye was caught by the net. He picked it up, felt its weight, swung it at an imaginary insect and almost knocked a picture from the wall. After that he put it down, abashed, and stuck his hands in his pockets, and began to walk restlessly about the room.
"Oh, come on," he said to Bill. "What are you staring at those things for? They're only dead butterflies."
"Go 'way," Bill said absently. There were some papers scattered on the center table, and he took one, and half laid it on the case, and took a pencil from his pocket, and began to sketch. A shadow fell across him but, absorbed, he did not notice it.
"Don't mind him, Mr. Woods," came Dolf's voice. "Bill's always drawing things. He thinks he's an artist."
Bill, recalled to life, started to thrust the paper out of sight. The Butterfly Man caught his hand.
"I didn't know you could do that," he said.
"I don't know as I can," Bill said frankly. "I just do it for fun. I like to draw little things—butterflies, caterpillars, beetles, flies, spiders."
"Oh, I knew I was going to hit it off with you," said the Butterfly Man, and thrust Bill's sketch into his pocket.
Ten minutes later the boys were in the house of glass. When Bert had entered it on his last trip he had come alone; but now Tom Woods was with them, and when he spoke he seemed to speak, in some strange way, particularly to Bill Harrison. He would reach out a gentle hand, capture a butterfly, tell something about it, and then release it, unharmed, to go its way. In this manner they learned that butterflies must drink, and that little shallow pans were in several places for their convenience.
"I remember," Tom Woods said, "coming upon a stream in which were hundreds of drowned butterflies. They were thirsty, and that was the only water, and they lighted on it and couldn't fly up again. Some butterflies will eat and drink after the fashion of the dragon-fly, holding itself poised above its food by the beat of its wings, but most of them must alight to feed. I think they show good sense. Personally I'd hate to have to eat my lunch by running around the block with a cup of coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other. Now, over here, you see, I have water dripping slowly over some plants. See those caterpillars feeding on the leaves? Those chaps are funny jiggers. So long as their food is moist they'll live together in harmony; but if their food dries up they'll turn cannibal and eat each other. I'm a peaceful citizen and want no revolutions around here, so I keep them happy."
Dolf snickered. "That's funny."
"No funnier than us humans," the Butterfly Man said gravely. "There would have been no French Revolution if the French people had had bread."
Dolf found the illusion rather foggy. At his birth the fairies who deal out imagination had not bothered to measure him out any at all. He had done very little reading and had but a hazy background of history. He saw that Bert was nodding understandingly and that Bill's eyes were alight with interest. Plainly, at the moment, he was the small end of the party. He fixed his eyes on a point of the roof of the butterfly house and stared at it with a preoccupied expression.
"Ah!" Tom Woods was saying, "there's the Purple Emperor. Pretty thing, isn't he—but a queer taste when it comes to grub. He likes meat that's a bit ancient—bad, to be frank. There's no accounting for tastes. Some persons become preachers and some become bandits. Got any idea what you're going to do when you grow up?" He shot the question at Bill.
Bill shook his head, and held out his finger, and thrilled as a butterfly alighted upon it with curiously clutching feet.
Dolf came out of his self-imposed abstraction. "Bill's going to be a butterfly charmer," he giggled.
Bill looked at him a moment, and then his gaze went back to the fragile bit of splendor upon his finger. "I might do worse," he said slowly and thoughtfully.
Dolf's jest, in some way, had fallen flat—his wit usually did fail. He cheered up when something was said about dinner, and made haste to lead the way back to the cabin. However, his high hopes of a feast were doomed to disappointment, for, though Tom Woods opened cans with a speed that was appetizing, his interest wandered from the stove once the food was on the fire. Bill Harrison was at the butterfly cases again, and soon the man was over beside him, and had brought out other cases filled with specimens from far corners of the globe.
"Frail," he said, "but powerful. Here I am with more leg length than I know what to do with, and yet those little things can put me to shame. I run a mile and feel that I'd give a dollar if a blacksmith would happen along and pump some air into me with a bellows. But we have instances where butterflies had been found flying in swarms one thousand miles from the nearest land. Did you ever walk twenty-five miles? I did. All I can say is that those peewees must be hard up for a journey."
The boy's eyes were wide. "You're not fooling me?"
The man's voice changed. "Bill," he said, "I never josh anybody who comes looking for the real thing."
Bill's direct gaze challenged him. "Well, I'm looking," he said.
And then Dolf's voice wailed a cry of dire distress. "Gee! Something's burning."
The Butterfly Man had ridiculed his long legs, but they served to carry him to the stove in two jumps. One side of the bacon was burned; and while he was scooping the meat out of the pan the beans began to scorch. All in all it was not much of a meal, and Dolf, who had come in mouth-watering anticipation, was plainly disgusted. But to one of the party, at least, the fare was spiced with the flavor of the gods. In all his life Bill Harrison would ask nothing better than what this day had brought.
There were books on the built-in shelves of the cabin, and after dinner he found them. Presently he was back at the butterfly cases again, comparing the colored plates with the specimens under the glass, unaware of a man who smoked contemplatively and studied him. Bert, stretched off on the ground outside, was content to stare up at the summer sky; but Dolf, whose day had gone badly, was impatient to be off. Thrice he called the time. The fourth summons brought Bert sitting upright.
"Late as that?" he demanded. "I'll call Bill."
"I'll get him," said the Butterfly Man, and went inside. The minutes passed. Dolf kicked at the toe clip of one pedal.
"Why didn't Bill bring a bed?" he demanded.
And then Bill appeared, bright-eyed, with two books under one arm. Bert caught Tom Woods' glance, and promptly took the books and strapped them to the frame of his own wheel.
"The latchstring will always be out for you fellows," the Butterfly Man said, and added, ruefully, that the grub would usually be a mess. "I've eaten so many burned meals," he confided, "that sometimes I feel that inside I must look like a piece of charcoal."
Dolf accepted this in silence.
"I'll take good care of the books," Bill called.
"Take care of yourself," Tom Woods answered.
Out of earshot of the cabin Dolf spoke. "What's the idea of the books? Trying to make up to him by playing wise?"
Bill shook his head. "No. I've done a lot of thinking since . . . I guess there wouldn't be much future for me in my father's store. I'd make a fine clerk in a rush, wouldn't I, stumping about on one leg? Whatever kind of living I make I've got to make it with my brain."
Dolf broke into a derisive giggle.
"Oh, I guess there's room in me for some brains," Bill said placidly. "I'm not all stomach."
All the way back to Springham Dolf rode in advance of the others and spoke not a word, a picture of fat dignity nursing outraged feelings.
Bert was late for supper again. His mother knew where he had gone and had not worried, but his father was put out at this second exhibition of tardiness.
"What puzzles me," he said, "is how you can go shinning up the wrong tree so often. First you go down to the railroad yards for a good time, and then I have to drop you out of the store, and now you take up with some freak character."
"He's not a freak," Bert protested. "He knows a lot."
"About what? Butterflies?"
"He makes a business of catching and raising them."
"Fine job for a grown man," Mr. Quinby said scornfully. After a moment a smile touched his lips. "I can picture Sam Sickles wasting time on him. I suggested that Sam ought to mix in with some of the town societies and get to know folks. 'Mr. Quinby,' he said, 'it's a mistake to waste time on people who cannot boost you up the ladder of success. I'll wait until Springham organizes a Board of Trade and I'll join that.' No, I don't think Sam would care much for your Butterfly Man."
Bert was nettled. "Maybe the Butterfly Man wouldn't care much for Sam Sickles," he said.
Mr. Quinby was plainly unprepared for the answer. He stared at his son in frowning perplexity, and then a flush of annoyance spread over his face. "Evidently," he said with fine sarcasm, "you take more stock in the judgment of this man who fools around with little bugs than you do in mine."
This time it was Bert who flushed. "I don't mean it that way," he said uncomfortably. "But you've never met Mr. Woods and . . ."
"Oh, let it go at that," his father said. "You're sore at Sam because he's making a better stab at things than you made. If you wanted the job why didn't you take care of it?"
Later, as the boy went up to his room, the scene struck him with a sense of tragedy. Why was it, he wondered miserably, that you could have such a good time with a man who was practically a stranger, and then come home and have things rub wrong with your own father? Perhaps the contentment of the Butterfly Man's cabin had given him a new conception . . . at any rate his mind was off along a channel of thought he had never before explored. From time to time, in his memory, boys not very much older than he had disappeared from Springham, and he had heard vague stories that they "could not get along at home." He was suddenly frightened.
His mother, coming to his room, found him with his face in his hands staring down at the floor.
"Why don't you go down to the store and meet Sam?" she asked. "You can't blame your father for thinking you're nursing a grouch. You haven't been near the store since this clerk was hired. You know, Bert, that does look queer."
The boy did not lift his head.
"Bert!" His mother's hand was on—his shoulder. "Are you sore about him being there?"
"No," he said after a moment; "I'm not sore about that. But all this praise he gets. . . . It looks as though dad was just saying things to get a crack in at me. That did get me riled. I made up my mind I wouldn't go near this fellow."
"Same old mule," said his mother, but she said it in a tone that took the sting from her words. "There's two sides to this. Look at it straight, Bert. Your father has every reason to think you're playing dog in the manger. You'd think the same thing if you were in his place. You ought to go down and get acquainted with Sam if only to show that you're fair and above board."
The boy shifted his ground. "Father hasn't any right to say things about the Butterfly Man when he doesn't know. . . ."
"Come, come; no steering up side roads. You ought to go to the store. Show your father that you're too big a chap to be small."
"All right," Bert said suddenly; "I'll go. But," he added positively, "I won't like him."
Three mornings later he awoke to find Springham soaking in a steady, persistent downpour of rain. Mr. Quinby, looking out the parlor window at the gray and dismal sky, decided that there would be little business that day and that he might as well run in to the city and see what the jobbers could offer him in the way of stock. The ninetwenty train carried him out of town, and a half-hour later Bert, hunched under an umbrella, was sloshing through the puddles along Washington Avenue.
He entered the store with a queer feeling of strangeness—he who should have looked upon this place almost as a birthright. The first glance showed him that the hand of change had been at work. The shelves were arranged differently, the show cases were more inviting, and a new threesided mirror stood where the purchaser of a suit of clothes could view himself from various angles. In front of the mirror was a young man industriously rubbing the glass.
"Good morning," he said, and put down his polishing cloth, and went behind a show case. "Something in collars to-day? We have a soft collar that's all the rage among high school fellows and college men. Let me see, you'd wear about a fourteen and a half, wouldn't you?"
Bert had been staggered by the smoothness of the clerk's manner and by his flow of words. "I didn't come in to buy," he half stammered.
"We're glad to have you come in if only for a visit," the clerk smiled. "While you're here I might as well show you the collars. You'll need collars sometime and . . ."
"But I don't have to pay for my collars. I'm Bert Quinby."
"Oh!" This time it was the clerk who was taken back. "I've heard your father speak of you, but I got the idea you were a little shaver. I suppose you know my name—Samuel Sickles." He held out his hand.
Bert took it. The pressure behind it was firm and muscular. He had built up in his own mind a mental picture of a clerk who was feminine and foppish. Some of his surprise must have revealed itself in his expression, for Sam gave a pleased smile.
"I'll have a better grip than that in a year," he said confidently. "Did you ever read The Secrets of Business Success?"
Bert shook his head.
"That's the book that put me on the track. Shake hands as though you meant it; a fishy handshake is like a whining voice. Be strong; it takes a strong body to battle the world. I never miss my exercises morring and night. I take a cold plunge every morning. You've got to keep fit if you want to climb in the world. You've got to feel peppy if you want to put pep into your work. Do you take regular exercise and watch your diet?"
Diet? Bert thought diets were only for old persons who were sick.
"You ought to," Sam said earnestly. "I'll have to lend you that book, but you can't keep it long. I try to read something from it every day. You can live only once; live for success. I picked out that sentence last night. A couple of years of living for efficiency and you'd be in shape to go out and twist the world around."
The clerk commanded an air of worldly wisdom and radiated an atmosphere of sure confidence that Bert had not found in any of the Springham boys he knew. It pleased him to be told that he wore the earmarks of success.
"You've made some changes here," he said, unbending. "The store looks good."
"Oh, your father did that. I've taken some of the detail off his hands and that's given him more time to plan. Without vision and plan, two-thirds of all work is waste motion. I got that out of the book, too. You look ahead, don't you?"
"Well . . ." Bert was doubtful of what looking ahead might signify, but he did not want to display his ignorance. Sam misconstrued his hesitation.
"Of course," the clerk admitted, "you don't have to look ahead in some ways. This business will be yours some day. It's been made for you. But I've got to depend upon myself. Ever hear of James Hill? He was a railroad man—an empire builder. He said he didn't care what you earned, if you didn't save money success was not in you. I've saved something every week since I went to work."
Bert found a place where he could show to advantage, and was quick to seize the opportunity.
"I save money. I've got quite a bit in the bank across the street," he said, and could see at once that his stock had gone up in Sam's estimation.
"I don't propose to let my money stay in the bank," the clerk said. "Make money work for you . . . invest it. Get a big profit. I'm just waiting around to find an opening for my capital, and then I'll blossom out as a business man."
"I've been thinking of that myself," Bert nodded. He had not thought of anything of the kind, but it sounded important to make the assertion.
Sam smiled. The idea of a schoolboy talking of investing capital! "You couldn't do it on just a few dollars," he warned good-naturedly.
"I've got more than that—about three hundred dollars. Some of it I saved, and some of it is Christmas and birthday money sent to me by my grandfather, and my uncle and my two aunts."
Sam's smile was succeeded by a look of respect. "Looking around for any particular business?"
"Anything that promises a good return," Bert answered. He had heard his father use the phrase.
"You'll find it," Sam admitted. "If a man's wise enough to save money he's wise enough to find a way to use it."
The clerk, during this dialogue, had not neglected his work. He finished the mirrors. He polished the show cases. He wiped invisible dust from the shelves. Three customers came in and he attended them with the air of one who found it a pleasure to serve their wants. Noon came, and Bert prepared to go home through the rain.
"If I let you have the book," Sam asked, "can you have it back to me by to-morrow?"
Bert promised.
"Better put it under your coat. It cost me a dollar. I don't want to get it wet."
Bert hid the book and was off. The clerk stood in the doorway and watched him make his way down the rain-spattered street.
"Sam," he mused, "you surely do fall into the luckiest straits. As soon as you discover an opportunity in this town I think you can put your hands on a partner with some capital to invest."