This time he was not to be disappointed.

"Graham," said Mr. Bangs, "what salary are you drawing?"

"One hundred and fifty, sir."

"How long have you been at the factory?"

"A year last February."

"Not so long as I thought. You are satisfied, I take it?"

Quin saw his chance and seized it.

"It's all right until I can get something better."

Mr. Bangs relit his cigar, and took his time about it. Then he blew out the match and threw it on the floor.

"I am looking for a new traffic manager," he said.

"What's the matter with Mr. Shields?" Quin inquired in amazement.

"I have fired him. He talks too much. I want a man to manage traffic, not to superintend a Sunday-school."

"But Mr. Shields has been there for years!"

"That's the trouble. I want a younger man--one who is abreast of the times, familiar with modern methods."

Quin's heart leaped within him. Could Mr. Bangs be intimating that he, Quinby Graham, with one year and four months' experience, might step over the heads of all of those older and more experienced aspirants into the empty shoes of the former traffic manager?

The South Seas seemed to flow just around the corner.

"I have been considering the matter," continued Mr. Bangs, catching a white moth between his thumb and forefinger and taking apparent pleasure in its annihilation, "and I've decided not to get a new man in for the summer, but to let you take the work for the present and see what you can do with it."

Quin's joy was so swift and sudden that even the formidable banks of Mr.

Bangs's presence could not keep it from overflowing.

"I can handle it as easy as falling off a log!" he cried excitedly. "I know every State in the Union and then some. Of course, I hate to see old Shields go, but he _is_ a slow-coach. I'll put it all over him! You'll see if I don't!"

"I am not so sure about that," said Mr. Bangs. "Shields had the sense to do what he was told without arguing the matter."

Quin laughed joyously. "Right you are!" he agreed. "I'd have come out of the service with a couple of bars on my shoulders if I hadn't argued so much. I don't know what gets into me, but when I see a better way of running things I just have to say so."

"Well, I don't want you to say so to me," warned Mr. Bangs. "There are certain business methods that we've got to observe, whether we like them or not. Take the matter of listing freight, for instance. That's where Shields fell down. He knows perfectly well that there isn't a successful firm in the country that doesn't cla.s.sify its stuff under the head that calls for the lowest freight rates."

"How do you mean?"

Mr. Bangs proceeded to explain, concluding his remarks with the observation that you couldn't afford to be too particular in these matters.

"But it is beating the railroads, isn't it?"

"The railroads can afford it. They lose no chance to gouge the manufacturers. It's like taxes. The government knows that everybody is going to dodge them, and so it allows for it. n.o.body is deceived, and n.o.body is the worse for it. Human nature is what it is, and you can't change it."

"Does the traffic manager have to cla.s.sify the exports?" Quin asked.

"Certainly; that and routing the cars is his princ.i.p.al business. It's a difficult and responsible position in many ways, and I have my doubts about your being able to fill it."

"I can fill it all right," said Quin, as confidently as before, but with a certain loss of enthusiasm. Upon the shining brows of his great opportunity he had spied the incipient horns of a dilemma.

For the next two hours Mr. Bangs explained in detail the duties of the new position, going into each phase of the matter with such efficient thoroughness that Quin forgot his scruples in his absorbed interest in the recital. It was no wonder, he said to himself, that Mr. Bangs was one of the most successful manufacturers in the South. A man who was not only an executive and administrator, but who could make with his own hands the most complicated farming implement in his factory, was one to command respect. Even if he did not like him personally, it was a great thing to work under him, to have his approval, to be trusted by him.

When Quin went up to his room at eleven o'clock, his head was whirling with statistics and other newly acquired facts, which he spent an hour recording in his note-book.

It was not until he went to bed and lay staring into the darkness that the mental tumult subsided and the moral tumult began. The questions that he had resolutely kept in abeyance all evening began to dance in impish insistence before him. What right had he to take Shields's place, when he had said exactly the things that Shields had been fired for saying? Did he want to go the way Shields had gone, compromising with his conscience in order to keep his job, ashamed to face his fellow man, cringing, remorseful, unhappy?

Then Mr. Bangs's arguments came back to him, specious, practical, convincing. Business was like politics; you could keep out if you didn't like it, but if you went in you must play the game as others played it or lose out. Five hundred a month! Why, a fellow wouldn't be ashamed to ask even a rich girl to marry him on that! The thought was balm to his pride.

As he lay there thinking, he was conscious of a disturbing sound in the adjoining room, and he lifted his head to listen. It sounded like some one crying--not a violent outburst, but the hopeless, steady sobbing of despair. His thoughts flew back to that blue scarf on the porch, to the inquiry about an extra seat at the table. They were true, then, those rumors about the lonely, unhappy woman whom Mr. Bangs had kept a virtual prisoner for years. Quin wondered if she was young, if she was pretty. A fierce sympathy for her seized him as he listened to her sobs on the other side of the wall. What a beast a man was to put a woman in a position like that!

His wrath, thus kindled, threw Mr. Bangs's other characteristics into startling relief. He saw him at the head of his firm, hated and despised by every employee. He saw him deceiving Madam Bartlett, sneering at Mr.

Ranny's efforts at reform, terrorizing little Miss Leaks. Then he had a swift and relentless vision of himself in his new position, a well trained automaton, expected to execute Mr. Bangs's orders not only in the factory but in the Bartlett household as well.

He tossed restlessly on his pillow. If only that woman would stop crying, perhaps he could get a better line on the thing! But she did not stop, and somehow while she cried he could see nothing good in Bangs or what he stood for. Hour after hour his ambition and his love fought against his principles, and dawn found him still awake, staring at the ceiling.

Going back to town after an early breakfast, he said to Mr. Bangs:

"I've been thinking it over, sir, and if you don't mind I think I'll keep the position I've got."

"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Bangs. "You decline the promotion?"

"I am afraid I am not the man for the job," said Quin.

"That's for me to decide."

Quin was visibly embarra.s.sed. After his enthusiasm of the night before, his present att.i.tude called for an explanation.

"Well, you see," he said awkwardly, "it may be good business and all that, but there are some things a fellow can't do when he feels about them the way I do."

"Meaning, I suppose, that your standards are so much higher than those of the rest of us that you cannot trade in the market-place?"

"No, sir; I don't mean anything of the kind," Quin flashed back, hot at the accusations of self-righteousness, but unable to defend himself without criticizing his employer.

"And this is final? You've definitely decided?"

"I have."

"Very well; I am through with you." And Mr. Bangs unfolded his newspaper and read it the rest of the way to the city.

At the office door he was dismounting from the car with his silence still unbroken, when Quin asked nervously: