The Argosy, Vol. 81, No. 4 — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FOUR SPEEDS FOR FOREST HILL. tempting to make automobiles on shoe- string capital. I made up my mind to quit while there was enough left to square up my creditors.” “Vou’re—you’re not manufacturing auto- mobiles—not any more?” the girl gasped. “You—why, Orton, I thought you had plenty of capital. Why did you give me a motor-car and—such a ring—when you needed money? Why—I could have backed you myself. Father would have backed you. He was saying only yesterday that he’d heard you’d sold nine cars and had orders for three or four more. He said—well, he said that he’d changed his opinion of you.” - Orton’s face assumed a look more in keeping with that of a worried and fagged business man. Her disapprobation worried him. “T was losing money all the time. I wouldn’t dare ask any one to back me,” he confessed solemnly. “But the thing was bound to go better next year. Couldn’t you have held on?” She spoke almost pleadingly. ‘I could lend you five thousand—ten thousand—even twenty, if it would tide you over the winter. In the spring, with the season’s demand waked up again—” Orton shook his head. Not for an instant had she tempted him. The thought of go- ing back to the rush and worry, the eternal grind of getting work out of men, of getting parts from makers, of smoothing down im- patient customers, of having them cancel their orders—all this had worn upon his temperament until it set up an utter re- vulsion. He never wanted to see the shop again, would have been glad to know that he never would have to see it. He despised the cheap little cars he had made. He was sick of the whole thing. “Arlene, it won’t go. The makers of parts are as badly behind with their orders as the makers of entire. automobiles. You can’t imagine what I’ve been through to get those cars finished that I’ve sold. I’m sick of it—utterly sick of it.” To cinch his case he told her of the Jack- son trouble. And suddenly he had grown to look sick. The flush in his cheek had come from the long drive and the stimulating relief of knowing it was all over. The thought that she would make him return to it had killed off the flush and left him pale. 611 “You poor boy,” she said, with sudden compassion. “You must stay here until you're better. We’ll just lie around on the beach and go in bathing when you feel like it; and you needn’t try to stay up for a sin- gle evening with me. You must just rest. When you feel better we’ll talk about busi- ness. We'll have you on your feet with the Orton cars yet.” And again he shook his head. ‘No, I’m through. I know when I’ve had enough. I can always get a position, and the ex- perience this summer will help me soon to make it a position of responsibility.” “Now,” and Arlene spoke positively, “we're not going to talk about it. You'll be just as anxious to get the business going again as I am to have you after you’ve had a few days’ rest.” Orton did not get better for being in Atlantic City. He remembers those days as a little the dreariest in his life. Arlene forbade him every attempt to turn to the more interesting diversions. She even in- sisted that, if they went motoring, she drive him in her own little car. They did not go. Just once he made a feeble effort to get out of the humdrum of sitting on the beach, riding in wheel-chairs, and bathing. He told Arlene he was so much better that he thought he would take her to the dance on Monday evening. “No,” she promptly vetoed. “We won’t do that. But, if you’re feeling so much better, you get to bed at nine o’clock this evening and sleep till ten to-morrow. Fa- ther’s going to stay down here all day. And he thinks that the sooner you and he can get together about your situation, the better.” At half past eight that evening Orton be- gan a little session with himself. The ques- tion before his assembled faculties and feel- ings was put in the form of a discussion as to whether he was going to permit his future father-in-law to set him up in business. As is very often the case in. discussions, the question before the house was only a side issue from a more real question kept quietly in the background. The real ques- tion was as to his own willingness to remain in the business of making Orton Cars. And he was not willing. The more he thought about it, the less he thought of it. He had grown sick of the whole thing. The sun, shimmering across the sea from the horizon, reached the Excelsior Garage SS Gomichboo (E@)