“No.”
“Well, a couple of the big boys—I think it was Replogle and Hutton or somebody like that—started a round out at the Everglades Club and they happened to get two caddies who were twice as big as they were—”
He was interrupted by a laugh, John’s laugh. It came so unexpectedly that Sam and Irene Comerford were frightened.
“Not time to laugh yet,” said the raconteur.
“I’m sorry,” said John.
“Well, one of the players hit the ball into an unplayable lie and asked his caddy to pick it up. The caddy grinned at him and said—”
Again an interruption, but this time not a laugh. John, looking straight at the girl, softly recited:
I’ll never know the glory of the moon
Until I see it shining in your eyes;
I’ll never know the loveliness of June
Till we look up together at its clear, magnificent, azure skies.
Each day will be just morning, night and noon
Till you are mine, my loved one, sweetheart, wife,
And then I’ll know the glory of the moon,
And then I’ll know the loveliness of life.
“Well, for!” exclaimed Sam Drake. “Come on, Irene. I want to get you away from this bird. I can’t compete with Eddie Guest.”
Miss Comerford got up. “I do think we ought to go,” she said. “Please tell Charlotte how sorry we were not to see her.”
John rose and began to act the polite host.
“Don’t let me drive you away with my doggerel! Charlotte won’t forgive me.”
“Honestly we must go,” said Irene. “I would like you to tell me what that was.”
“I think it will be part of a libretto I’m writing, a libretto I’ve been writing for five years.”
“When did you make up those lines?”
“Since you came, most of them.”
“Hot apple sauce! Come on, Irene. You’re supposed to be my inspiration, not his,” said Sam.
“Just a second,” said John. “Do you often go to your father’s office?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, never mind.”
“I go there once or twice a week.”
“Whenever she’s flat,” said Sam.
They saw one of John’s infrequent smiles.
“Here’s hoping you’re frequently flat.”
“Why?”
But he had started up the stairs without waiting to bow them out.
Charlotte came home about half past six, hot and in a bad temper. She had had two blowouts, one of them halfway home from her bootlegger’s, two miles out in the country, and five cars had disregarded her SOS. The sixth one’s occupant was an old farmer who knew as much about changing tires as she did. It had taken them half an hour to do the job. John told her Miss Comerford and Mr. Drake had been in for a while. She asked him what he thought of Irene. He made no reply at all, but Charlotte was used to that. Then she asked him whether Wallie Blair had telephoned and he said no, really thinking he was telling the truth.
At seven she gave Wallie up and dined alone with John. But when Wallie came a little after eight swore he had talked with Irene and that the latter had promised to deliver the message, there was a further display of temper, first directed toward Miss Comerford and then toward John, when John, to save Irene, admitted that she might have given him the message and he might have forgotten about it. Charlotte was pacified by his promise that he would accept Mr. Beasley’s offer if Mr. Beasley made one.
Mr. Beasley made one next morning, a salary of two hundred dollars a week for work that could be taught him easily. He was given a private office with a desk and two chairs. No one came in to instruct him in his duties and he would have been happy polishing up his libretto if Beth Beasley had not made his room a second home.
“Do you like me now?” she asked, perched on his desk too close for comfort. It was his fourth day on the “job.”
“Why now?”
“I mean because I got you this chance.”
“I liked you before that,” he said.
“Dear, do you know what you’re saying?”
“Certainly.”
“Can’t you say it more plainly, that you’re fond of me, that you care a little? I know how shy you are and I have to do the talking for you. I hate to. But you won’t do it yourself.”
“What am I to say?”
“Just that you care for me.”
“I do.”
“John, does that mean it’s an understanding?”
“What kind of understanding?”
“That we care for one another.”
“I guess we do.”
“Aren’t you going to be—not so cold and distant?”
“Listen, Beth,” said John nervously, “I don’t know whether I can make good here or not. And until I am sure of myself and where I stand, I can’t think of—of other things.”
“Daddy would never turn you out.”
“I’ll turn myself out if I can’t do what he wants me to. I’ve got to make good on my own account, without any outside influence. If you’ll just understand that!”
“I’ve waited this long, I guess I can wait a little longer,” said Beth, and left him.
Well, the fifth day was something entirely different. One of the partners. H. N. Comerford, was in Chicago. At a quarter of nine, the other partner, J. L. Beasley, called up to say he was going fishing; he knew that old Fred Howard, his chief and only clerk unless you counted John Knowles was capable of running the whole works single-handed. The rest of the office force was made up of the telegraph operator the telephone girl, the marker and the pretty new stenographer Miss Davenport.
Old Howard was usually on deck at nine o’clock sharp. This morning his wife telephoned at ten after nine that he had broken a leg trying to get on a streetcar. Miss Davenport came into John’s room to tell him the news and he nearly fainted. When he had pulled himself together, he rushed into the main office and instructed the telephone girl to put all calls on his wire; he would keep Miss Davenport with him and when orders came in, he
