The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

70 nothing in that, you know. And ’”—he lowered his voice—‘‘ don’t spit out all you know again like that. You might make trouble for somebody.” “Tt’s all right.” Evans spoke the trite phrase of for- giveness almost automatically. But he checked the impulse to say that he really could manage to take care of the full number of books ordinarily allotted to him. Few enough favors had been shown him; he need not go out of his way to dodge what were long overdue. “Got any engagement for asked Mercer. For a moment Evans could not realize - that he was being extended another invi- tation. Not in all the while he had worked at the Ironclad Trust Company had any one thought of inviting him to lunch. ‘No, nothing special.” He managed to repeat the words with which other men answered the query just put to him. “T want to take you to a little club I belong to. You’ll meet some good fellows there,” said Mercer, so much as if he meant it that Bruce could ill afford to question it. “Why,” almost gasped the surprised young man, “I'll be delighted. I—I’m not very much on lunch ordinarily, though.” * You blithely. It is of no use to pretend that Bruce Evans did any work that morning. He was in a daze. All the things that dis- tinguish real fellows from sheer drudges had happened to him at once. He had been invited to eat with other men, with the head bookkeeper, with the cashier at his own home. They were trying to make things easy for him instead of hard; they were wanting to provide rest and comfort for him. What was the answer? That something lay behind this he was too shrewd to doubt. But what could it be? Underneath this sudden outburst of friendly consideration was some fear. They were scared by his understanding lunch?” look it,’ Mercer responded THE ARGOSY. the favoritism which kept Mercer in his place. His hint to that effect seemed to have touched some secret spring that had opened to shim hitherto undreamed of things. That Mercer’s position was due entire- ly to his relationship with the big country depositor was evidently more of a secret than he had supposed—or Mercer and Wheelock thought it more of a secret than it was. As a matter of fact, it had been more or less whispered about by the other clerks as the exnlanation of the superior place for the inferior man. Bruce had not thougkt but that such whisperings must have got back to Mercer time and again. It seemed they hadn’t. He concluded that the president must have extreme no- tions of fairness, and that Wheelock and Mercer were anxious to keep their little game secret. Their alarm about it could scarcely last them long. Bruce had no desire to “graft” upon their fear. But common justice to himself gave him some right to take what compensation was coming to him for the long time in which neither of them had given him a fair deal. He half wished he had accepted Wheelock’s offer of board in the beautiful suburb. The club to which Mercer took him confirmed a belief he had long entertained. The head bookkeeper’s uncle evidently provided him with a subsidy over and above his salary. Years since he had known what the bookkeepers got. Almost all of them got a dollar or two more than he. But Mercer’s wage was not more than twenty-five dollars a week. It was no millionaires’ club. Only a drudge like Evans would have regarded it as wonderfully extravagant. Probably he overestimated the costliness of things. But he was quite sure that no man could keep an automobile and a family and belong to such a club on twenty-five dol- lars a week. . That Mercer did not have to earn all he got was no affair of Bruce’s, the latter concluded. It was for him to enjoy as CONMMGCOOOKS (©)