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The girl he left behind | Project Gutenberg
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<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75475 ***</div>
<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<h1>THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND</h1>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="bbox">
<p class="ph1">THE “DO SOMETHING”<br>
BOOKS</p>
<p class="center">BY<br>
HELEN BEECHER LONG</p>
<hr class="full">
<p><span class="smcap">Janice Day</span><br>
<span class="smcap">The Testing of Janice Day</span><br>
<span class="smcap">How Janice Day Won</span><br>
<span class="smcap">The Mission of Janice Day</span></p>
<p class="center">12mo. Cloth. Illustrated<br>
Price per volume, $1.25 net</p>
<hr class="full">
<p class="center">GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY<br>
<span class="smcap">New York</span></p>
</div></div></div></div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_0"></span>
<figure class="figcenter illowe28_125" id="i_004">
<img class="w100" src="images/i_004.jpg" alt="">
<figcaption class="caption"><p class="caption">“I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things
straight here!”</p>
<p class="right">(<i>See Page <a href="#Page_138">138</a></i>)</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_005.jpg" alt="title page"></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="titlepage">
<p><span class="xxlarge">THE GIRL HE LEFT<br>
BEHIND</span></p>
<p>BY<br>
<span class="xlarge">HELEN BEECHER LONG</span><br>
Author of<br>
The “Janice Day” Books</p>
<p>ILLUSTRATED BY<br>
<span class="large">R. EMMETT OWEN</span></p>
<p><span class="large">GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY</span><br>
NEW YORK</p>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1918, by</span><br>
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY</p>
<hr class="tiny">
<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i><br>
<br>
<br>
PRINTED IN U. S. A.</p>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[vii]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
</div>
<table>
<tr><td class="tdr"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">I</td><td> “So Perfectly Capable”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11"> 11</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">II</td><td> A Comparison</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22"> 22</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">III</td><td> “Dogfennel”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30"> 30</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IV</td><td> The Skinners</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41"> 41</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">V</td><td> The Dream of a Star</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53"> 53</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VI</td><td> Two Good-byes</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66"> 66</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VII</td><td> Leading Up to a Climax</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77"> 77</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">VIII</td><td> A Puzzling Situation</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89"> 89</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">IX</td><td> The Duty Devolves</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98"> 98</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">X</td><td> Love and Business</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107"> 107</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XI</td><td> War Is Declared</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_121"> 121</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XII</td><td> The Image He Took Away</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129"> 129</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIII</td><td> The Awakening</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140"> 140</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIV</td><td> Benway’s Discovery</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_152"> 152</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XV</td><td> From “Over There”</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_164"> 164</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[viii]</span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVI</td><td> The Clouds Thicken</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175"> 175</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVII</td><td> A Rendezvous With Death</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_185"> 185</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XVIII</td><td> The Wrath of the Hun</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_198"> 198</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XIX</td><td> Uncertainties</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_205"> 205</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XX</td><td> So Far Away!</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_216"> 216</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXI</td><td> The Burden</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_224"> 224</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXII</td><td> The Fight</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_231"> 231</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXIII</td><td> Comparisons</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_241"> 241</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXIV</td><td> Opening the Way</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_248"> 248</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXV</td><td> Compensation</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_259"> 259</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdr">XXVI</td><td> His Awakening</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_265"> 265</a></td></tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
</div>
<table>
<tr><td class="tdl">“I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things
straight here!” (<i>See Page <a href="#Page_138">138</a></i>)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_0"> <i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td><td class="tdr"><small>FACING<br>PAGE</small></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdl">He did fire—futilely, perhaps—as the great
car circled clumsily above the spot (<i>See
Page <a href="#Page_201">201</a></i>)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_200"> 200</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdl">“I nominate her as assistant manager, to hold
the job till Frank Barton comes back!”
(<i>See Page <a href="#Page_227">227</a></i>)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_227"> 227</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tdl">“You have been in my thoughts continually—the
girl I left behind” (<i>See Page <a href="#Page_268">268</a></i>)</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_268"> 268</a></td></tr>
</table>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span></p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
<p class="ph2">THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND</p>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br>
<small>“SO PERFECTLY CAPABLE”</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Ethel Clayton</span> gathered the several letters with
their accompanying checks in a neat sheaf and rose
from her desk, which was placed nearest the door of
the manager’s office. With the papers in her left
hand she went to the door on which was stenciled
“Mr. Barton” and opened it without waiting for a
reply to her knock. She knew only Jim Mayberry
was in the room with the manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company.</p>
<p>As she pushed the door inward she heard Frank
Barton saying:</p>
<p>“I am puzzled what answer to make them, Jim.”</p>
<p>The manager was at his desk. Mayberry, leaning
back in his chair, nodded understandingly and in
agreement. The general manager was not in the
habit of taking the superintendent of the factory into
his confidence in particular instances and Mayberry
was alive to that fact. He listened. Listening, and
keeping one’s mouth shut, never hurt a man yet.</p>
<p>The girl at the door of the office waited, too. Her
business with the manager was important, if not imperative.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>“The Bogata people have been good customers of
ours in the past,” went on Barton, reflectively. “But
I have inside information that their credit is wabbly.
It is strained, just as ours has been. If we tied up
twenty to thirty thousand dollars in their particular
line of goods, and then had the goods left on our
hands, it might be fatal to the Hapwood-Diller Company,
even now.</p>
<p>“The expansion of mercantile values and the increase
in profits have not struck our kind of production,
as you very well know, Jim. Our stock is not
listed among the ‘war brides.’ Rather it might better
be termed a ‘war widow.’ The company has had a
hard pull, Jim. We can’t afford to take many
chances.”</p>
<p>Again the superintendent sat tight and merely
nodded. The declining sun delivered slanting rays in
through the high windows of the general manager’s
office. The two men—neither of whom had arrived
at thirty years—sat with preternaturally grave faces,
one ruminating upon the event that had unexpectedly
arisen in the affairs of the concern they had both
worked for since boyhood; the other possibly giving
much more thought to his own personal matters.</p>
<p>For Jim Mayberry, without being in the least
neglectful of his duties as superintendent of the factory,
was a person given much to the contemplation
of what he called “the prime law of nature: Looking
out for Number One.” He did, however, suggest:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>“Those Bogata people have been all right folks,
Frank. The factory’s made money on their orders.”</p>
<p>“That’s just it,” the manager returned briskly, but
with a gesture that betrayed his indecision.</p>
<p>He was a tall, black-haired, virile fellow, clean
shaven, good color in his cheeks, and impeccably
dressed. Mayberry, in contrast, had light hair which
already he plastered across his crown to hide an incipient
bald spot. He wore a small blond moustache
and had numerous wrinkles about his eyes.</p>
<p>“Just the same it is not safe, I firmly believe, to
accept the order. But a brusk refusal might do the
Hapwood-Diller Company untold harm at some future
time. The Bogata concern may come back. Miracles
do happen.”</p>
<p>“Better accept the order then,” Mayberry put in.
“We can postpone filling it. We don’t have to give a
bond. If they really prove to be shaky, we can renege.”</p>
<p>The girl, who had come in and softly closed the door,
flashed the superintendent a glance that was all scorn
for business ethics thus expressed. But Barton replied
quite calmly:</p>
<p>“Two objections to that, Jim. In the first place
the Hapwood-Diller Company has always based its
policy on honor. Secondly, it is unwise for us to tie
up any money at all in beginning a job we do not
intend to complete.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>“Aw!” grunted the superintendent. His vocabulary—at
this juncture at least—seemed not to be
extensive.</p>
<p>There had been a rising murmur in the street under
the open windows for some minutes. Now the sudden
crash of martial music broke upon their ears. Barton’s
countenance became vivid with interest, and he
swung himself erect and strode to the nearest window.</p>
<p>“Here come the boys,” he said, pride vibrating in
his voice. He was very military looking. Nothing
but the “setting up exercise” could ever have made his
shoulders so very square and his splendidly muscled
torso taper to so narrow a waist.</p>
<p>Mayberry rose and sauntered after him. “Mailsburg’s
heroes,” he observed. “I suppose you’re
wishing you were marching away with them, Frank.”</p>
<p>The other said nothing, but his eyes glowed. The
marching column swung around the corner following
the band—a column in khaki, a color already becoming
familiar on the streets although war was not many
months old.</p>
<p>Ethel had gone to the other window and was likewise
looking out upon the quota of the National
Guard, with packs and rifles, on their way to the
railroad station. A little group of women, girls and
children clung to the column and kept pace with it.
The men spectators seemed rather ashamed to follow
on, but stood, nevertheless, on the curb to watch
the boys go by.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>“I expect they’ll have a hot old time down at that
training camp,” drawled Mayberry.</p>
<p>Barton did not seem to hear him. His hand came
to salute as the colors went by.</p>
<p>A volume of voices rose from below as the band
music drifted into the distance.</p>
<p>“And mebbe marching to their graves!”</p>
<p>“It’s a shame that some that can least be spared
have to go while them that would never be missed
keep out of it.”</p>
<p>“You’re right! Some of ’em’s got fathers an’
mothers, an’ wives!” cried a shrill voice, “while them
that ain’t got a soul dependent on ’em——”</p>
<p>“There’s one yonder,” was the quick rejoinder.
“And had all the benefit of Guard training too!”
And the speaker, a woman, directed the gaze of her
companions to the office window.</p>
<p>Mayberry chuckled. “They’ve pinned you to the
wall, Frank,” he murmured in the ear of the white-faced
manager.</p>
<p>Ethel Clayton had turned suddenly from the
window. “Have you time to sign these checks and
letters before the outgoing mail, Mr. Barton?” she
asked.</p>
<p>He took the papers, but did not verbally reply for a
moment. His countenance had become calm again,
if still pale, when he had seated himself in his chair
and turned in it so that the others could both observe
him.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>“I will sign them at once, Miss Clayton,” Barton
said quite composedly. “But first——”</p>
<p>For a moment his gaze centered upon her. There
was something wholly good to look at in the girl’s
face and figure. Had she not dressed so practically
for her work her personal attractions would have been
further enhanced. Mayberry was watching her, too;
and his gaze betrayed a certain eagerness, whereas the
manager’s eyes merely revealed expectancy. Then he
flicked a glance in Mayberry’s direction.</p>
<p>“Perhaps Miss Clayton might give us a word of
advice upon this matter, Jim?” he said questioningly,
and with a quizzical little smile.</p>
<p>The superintendent, a little startled, shifted his gaze
from the girl’s face to the manager’s countenance.
Ethel, perfectly composed, waited for the explanation
of Barton’s observation.</p>
<p>“Woman’s intuition forever!” the latter ejaculated.</p>
<p>“What do you mean, Frank?” hastily demanded
Jim Mayberry. “If you and I don’t know what to
do——”</p>
<p>Ethel flushed faintly, but looked questioningly at
the manager. The implied doubt of her ability in
Mayberry’s tone possibly piqued her. Frank Barton
said in his good-natured, easy manner:</p>
<p>“Oh, we know <i>what</i> to do. But it’s the way the
thing is done. You know about this new Bogata
order, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>“Of course, Mr. Barton.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>“I do not see how we can accept it. The Bogata
Company is not in good financial standing. But we
must not offend them. The refusal must be one to
which they cannot take exception. It is a big order,
and they have sent it in without question, just as
though they expected us to get to work on it with
merely an acknowledgment of the favor.”</p>
<p>“I see,” the girl said in her composed way.</p>
<p>“You are so perfectly capable, Miss Clayton,”
laughed the general manager. “See what you can do
with the matter. Do you think we can keep within
the lines of safety, and yet make no enemy of the
Bogata people?”</p>
<p>“I believe it can be done, Mr. Barton,” replied the
girl.</p>
<p>There was a decision in her manner of speaking that
revealed Ethel Clayton as being quite what the general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company had said
she was—“capable.”</p>
<p>“See what you can do with a letter, then,” Barton
went on, producing the order sheets in question and
handing them to her along with the letters and checks
he had signed.</p>
<p>She left the private office without further word.
Jim Mayberry was frowning.</p>
<p>“You’re trusting a good deal to that girl, Frank,”
he growled.</p>
<p>“I’ve never trusted anything to her yet that she
hasn’t handled all right,” the manager replied easily.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>
“If I manage to—to get away, Jim, you’ll find her a
great help here.”</p>
<p>“Uh-huh!” grunted the superintendent. “Maybe.”</p>
<p>“You are insular,” laughed Frank Barton. “The
women are forging to the front, man. Miss Clayton
is far more capable than some of the heads of departments
who have grown gray here.”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” agreed the superintendent. “But I
don’t want to see her out there in overalls, bossing my
men around. Don’t forget that, Frank.”</p>
<p>The superintendent arose and strolled out of the
private office. In the larger desk room he halted and
watched the “capable” girl at her desk nearest the
manager’s door. Ethel was the “buffer” between
much outside annoyance and the general manager of
the Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p>There were gold and red lights in her chestnut hair;
the pallor of her countenance was not unhealthy;
merely she was not enough in the open. But where
the sun had kissed the bridge of her nose there was a
sprinkle of tiny freckles. There were flecks of gold,
too, in her brown eyes. Her mouth and chin were
firm rather than soft, and the gaze of her eyes direct;
nevertheless there was nothing unfeminine about her
appearance.</p>
<p>The severest critic could hold no brief against the
charms of her figure. Her arms were beautifully
rounded, her wrists tapering, her hands just the right
size. She had a naturally small waist, and the lines<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>
of her hips showed that her limbs were slenderly yet
strongly built. She was a tall girl.</p>
<p>The superintendent caught her eye after a moment,
she looking up thoughtfully from the papers before
her.</p>
<p>“You want to handle that business with gloves,
Ethel,” he advised in a low voice. “Barton’s hardly
himself to-day—the boys going away and all. He
thinks that, with three years’ experience in bossing
those sappies around the armory, he should jump right
into this war. Get to be a general or something right
off the handle,” and he chuckled.</p>
<p>Again the girl’s face flushed softly and she dropped
her gaze. She made him no reply at all, but Mayberry
went on:</p>
<p>“And that Fuller girl’s got him running around in
circles, too. You can see he isn’t himself, or he would
not balk at such an order as this from the Bogata
people. Why, they’re all right folks. The factory’s
made a lot of money out of their orders. And
here——”</p>
<p>“Did Mr. Barton ask you to discuss this matter
with me, Mr. Mayberry?” asked the girl coldly and
without looking up again. “If not, please remember
that he has commissioned me to write a letter to them
that will meet his approval. Don’t bother me now.”</p>
<p>“Oh, pshaw, Ethel!” the man said, smiling down at
her unctuously. “Don’t take every little thing so
blame seriously. Frank Barton and I were kids together.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>
I can’t fall down and worship him the way
some of you do. Anyway, you’d better show him how
to take a chance with these Bogata people—if you
really want to <i>help</i>. I know they’re all right.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you tell that to Mr. Barton?” the girl
asked rather tartly.</p>
<p>“Oh, pshaw!” chuckled the superintendent. “Let
it go till to-morrow. It’s almost closing time, anyway.
Take a little spin in that car of mine before
supper, will you?”</p>
<p>“Thank you; no.”</p>
<p>“Aw! don’t act so offishly, Ethel. You’ve never
been to ride with me yet.”</p>
<p>“I understand that other girls have—to their sorrow,”
Miss Clayton responded in a tone that cut
through even Jim Mayberry’s skin. He flushed dully
and his lazy eyes began to glow.</p>
<p>“Don’t believe everything you hear, Ethel,” he
said. “I want to talk to you about that. Let me
drive you home to-night and I’ll explain these stories
that you have heard.”</p>
<p>He strolled away as Little Skinner came across the
room to ask a question. Could it be that Little Skinner
had received a secret signal to break in upon the
superintendent’s objectionable line of conversation?
At least, her business with Ethel was brief.</p>
<p>The latter’s attention immediately returned to the
problem the manager had put up to her for solution.
She was made proud whenever Frank Barton did anything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
like this, and of late it was not infrequent that
he had shown his trust in her ability.</p>
<p>Yet there was a sting in the way he had spoken, too.
She knew well enough that the sting was unintentional
on his part. Never had the general manager
been other than scrupulously polite to her. She was
always “Miss Clayton” to him, and he deferred to her
in many ways and was as courteous in his busiest
moments as he could have been meeting her at a social
affair. That was Frank Barton’s way.</p>
<p>But—</p>
<p>She found that her gaze had wandered from the
papers before her to the small mirror set into the
rather ornate inkstand that stood upon her desk—a
birthday present from her office mates not many
months before. The girl reflected there was, Ethel
Clayton very well knew, better looking than the
average girl. Her even features were quietly beautiful.
She perhaps lacked the verve and dash possessed
by some girls. She had one particular girl in mind
as she thought this. She lacked the tricks of the social
trade too, that that same girl possessed.</p>
<p>She shrugged her shoulders and brought her attention
back with a jerk to the matter in hand. But
there was faint disgust in her tone as she murmured:</p>
<p>“Yes, just as he says: ‘Miss Clayton is so perfectly
capable.’ Pah!”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br>
<small>A COMPARISON</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">She</span> read the letter from the Bogata Company and
again glanced through the order. It was a large one.
It called for certain supplies she knew the factory
did not have on hand. She realized that the goods
ordered were all of a special pattern and would be
practically useless either to the Hapwood-Diller Company
or to any other concern save the Bogata people
if the latter should be unable to take the goods.</p>
<p>Yet this letter assumed that the order would be accepted
and the goods turned out without any hesitancy
on the part of the manufacturers, and upon the usual
terms. The Bogata Company ignored the possibility
of the Hapwood-Diller Company having heard of its
financial embarrassments. The letter and accompanying
order were sent, Ethel was sure, in a spirit of
bravado. To use a common phrase, the Bogata
people were “trying to put something over.”</p>
<p>If the scheme went through, all well and good.
The Hapwood-Diller Company might be made the
means of saving the Bogata people from actual and
complete collapse. Ethel knew, however, that her
employing concern was in no shape to assume such a
burden. Yet if the firm ordering the goods finally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>
pulled out of its quagmire of financial difficulty, its
friendship rather than its enmity was to be desired.</p>
<p>Her mind centered upon the matter, the logical
circumstances connected with it marching in slow
procession through her brain. She was acquainted
with every important order now on the factory’s
books. Even Jim Mayberry had no better grasp of
the details of the factory’s affairs than Ethel Clayton.</p>
<p>Suddenly she got up and went to a file cabinet
wherein was listed the particulars of all orders as yet
unfinished. She began to figure with pencil and pad
upon the already promised output of the factory and
its possible output when the force was driven at top
speed.</p>
<p>Her calculations led her to certain unmistakable
conclusions. She went back to her desk, calmly
wrote the letter, typed it, and took the letter and her
figures in to Barton. He was about to close his desk
for the day.</p>
<p>“Do you think you have succeeded?” he asked,
smiling and taking the typed sheet from her hand.
But in a moment he glanced up quickly and with a
slight frown. “What is this you say here, Miss
Clayton? We cannot accept the order because of
work already contracted for? Why, that——”</p>
<p>“Is the plain truth, Mr. Barton!” she exclaimed,
putting forward her array of figures. “The factory
is now working maximum hours and with a full crew
in all departments. I have heard you say yourself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>
that either extra help or overtime cuts into the profits
rather than increases them. To fulfill contracts we
have accepted, if you took on this of the Bogata Company,
we would have to run the machines longer
hours and pay extra wages. The Bogata people offer
no price for their work to cover such an increased
cost. My letter embodies the actual truth without
going into particulars; but my statements can be
easily proved if they are inclined to be critical.”</p>
<p>Barton’s face had been gradually lighting up, and
it was with real admiration that he said at her conclusion:</p>
<p>“Fine! I’ll sign that and you can put it in the mail
in the morning. Has John gone to the post-office?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Mr. Barton.”</p>
<p>“The morning will do,” said the general manager,
affixing his signature to the letter. “You certainly
are a capable assistant.”</p>
<p>She flushed at his words as she turned from his desk;
and the color remained in her countenance for some
time. But it was not a flush of pleasure. Indeed, the
expression of her countenance was not at all happy
as she closed her desk and left the main office a little
later.</p>
<p>At the street exit she hesitated; then she went back
through the drying and cutting rooms and had John
Murphy let her out of the side gate which would not
be opened for an hour yet for the exit of the factory<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>
hands. She had caught a glimpse of Jim Mayberry
sitting in his car out in front.</p>
<p>She did not like the superintendent, and for more
reasons than one. In the first place, he was one of
those men who seem to have no respect at all for girls
who worked. Ethel was not sure how well he was received
by Mailsburg people whose first thoughts were
of society. But Mayberry had a bad reputation
among many respectable people. Careful mothers
and fathers frowned on his attentions to their daughters.</p>
<p>As she turned into Burnaby Street on her way
home she saw Frank Barton ahead of her. His military
stride was likewise taking him briskly homeward.
The girl might have hastened her own steps and joined
him; but she hesitated, for that was not like Ethel
Clayton. Her association with the handsome general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company
had been entirely on a business footing. The
fact that they attended the same church had scarcely
brought them together outside the offices of the concern.</p>
<p>Barton was well liked by most Mailsburg people.
Especially had he been commended for his work of the
last two years—since he had been raised to the pinnacle
of general manager of the biggest manufacturing concern
in the town.</p>
<p>Yet there are always carping critics in every place
and in any event. As mark the criticism hurled at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>
the young manager from the sidewalk that afternoon
as the boys were marching from the National Guard
Armory to the railway station.</p>
<p>Ethel knew that the suggestion that Barton was a
slacker must have hurt the general manager cruelly.
She, perhaps as well as anybody else, knew why Frank
Barton, trained in the Guard, and a military man from
choice, was not marching away with this first quota
at the call to arms.</p>
<p>If many Mailsburg people looked at Barton in the
way suggested by the careless criticism which had
lately reached his ears, Ethel Clayton knew that the
manager’s existence was going to be a hard one. She
did not want to see him go to the war. Indeed, she
was by no means inspired as yet with any degree of
patriotism. The war was too remote and our reason
for entering into it too theoretical. The blood of but
few of our men had been shed, and those were, as a rule,
such as were connected with the more spectacular
portions of the service, nor had our women and children
been butchered by the Hun.</p>
<p>In her heart Ethel longed to say something to Frank
Barton to ease the wound which he had suffered that
afternoon. Should she overtake him and speak?
And then, even while she hesitated, the humming of a
smoothly running automobile sounded behind her.</p>
<p>She turned to look, startled, fearing it was Jim
Mayberry. But a girl was driving the car that
swerved in toward the curb, stopping just beside the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Barton!”</p>
<p>The girl in the car was handsome, but with a high
color and a shrill voice. She had a great deal of light
hair, which was carefully dressed; she wore an expensive
motor hat and veil; her cerise motor coat was
of heavy silk. If the frame ever sets off the picture to
advantage, then Helen Fuller was a work of art!</p>
<p>“It’s just too, too lovely that I should catch you this
way, Mr. Barton,” she cried, as Ethel approached
nearer. “You can’t say you are busy and I am <i>sure</i>
it is not yet dinner time. I <i>must</i> see you about our
garden festival. You know, for the Red Cross. We
<i>all</i> must do our bit <i>these</i> days. Do hop in and advise
with poor me.”</p>
<p>Ethel came within range of Barton’s vision. He
gave her as usual one of his warm, kind smiles, lifting
his hat. Helen Fuller stared at the passing girl, who
plainly heard her scornful query: “One of your factory
hands, Mr. Barton?”</p>
<p>“One of our office force—and one of the most valuable
on the pay roll of the Hapwood-Diller Company,
Miss Fuller, I assure you.”</p>
<p>But the cheerful reply did not take the barb out of
the wound Helen Fuller’s question had made. A little
farther along the street, however, Ethel shook herself
and murmured:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>“What a perfect fool I am! It is ridiculous to mind
anything that Helen Fuller says. She remembers
very well going to school with me and that I was
always at or near the head of the class and she at the
foot. That was before Grandon Fuller had that stock
in the company left him by Uncle Diller. Dear me!
how the possession of money changes some people.”
Then, and cheerfully, she exclaimed aloud: “Ah!
here’s Benway.”</p>
<p>A young man with a perfectly splendid head of
brown curly hair, flawless complexion, level brows,
fine, open gray eyes set well apart, a straight nose and
lips not full enough to be sensuous but not too thin,
the whole countenance softened by a cleft chin and
humorous lines at the corners of his mouth—that was
Benway Chase.</p>
<p>He came swinging along the walk and seized Ethel
companionably by her right arm, although that placed
him upon the inner side of the path. She met his
look with one of pleasure, and they went on together
like the good comrades they were.</p>
<p>People whom they knew and met greeted them with
a matter-of-course air. To see Ethel Clayton and
Ben Chase together was nothing astonishing for
Mailsburg folk. They had been neighbors and chums
since they were in rompers.</p>
<p>Her brightness of countenance faded when her old
chum left her at the gate of the Clayton cottage. She
cast a commiserating glance after him as he went on,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>
whistling. It was not until then that the withered,
useless right arm of the young man became really
noticeable.</p>
<p>She called to her mother that she was home from
work and went up to her room to freshen her dress for
dinner. Benway slipped out of her mind as she did
this—and most other things, save one. That was a
comparison she had begun to make on Burnaby Street
between herself and Helen Fuller.</p>
<p>Was she jealous of the other girl? Why should she
be? She was sure she would not care to change places
with Miss Fuller, money and all, for any consideration.
Yet—</p>
<p>She saw Frank Barton getting into the Fuller car,
which Helen drove so conspicuously about the streets
of Mailsburg. Ethel Clayton could not do that!
Ethel must work, and dress plainly six days in the
week because of her position. Miss Fuller was always
dressed as gaily as a bird of paradise. And one must
confess that men’s eyes were attracted—sometimes
blinded—by gay clothes. Frank Barton could not be
blamed for being a man. No. She had no complaint
to make against Frank Barton. He was always polite
and kind and appreciative.</p>
<p>“And he’d be all of that to a stray kitten that
chanced to cross his path!” she ejaculated in sudden
disgust. “Helen Fuller has something to offer him
that I haven’t.”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br>
<small>“DOGFENNEL”</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Frank Barton</span> stepped into the car beside Miss
Fuller and was whirled away, a willing captive. To
tell the truth, the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company had been so busy fitting himself for
his present situation with the corporation, which he
had now held two years, that he had found little play-time.
Having been motherless since childhood, and
always sisterless, he probably knew less about women
than any normal man in Mailsburg who had arrived
at the age of twenty-eight.</p>
<p>No girl had before so plainly shown that she was
interested in him—and Miss Fuller only recently.
Her curiosity had first been piqued by hearing Grandon
Fuller speak in strong approval of the manager.
Barton had pulled the concern out of a slough of financial
trouble that had threatened to ruin the Hapwood-Diller
Company.</p>
<p>The Fullers had not always been wealthy. At least,
not the Grandon-Fuller branch. Not until Israel
Diller died and left them the bulk of his holdings in the
Hapwood-Diller Company were they any better off
than their neighbors on the far end of Burnaby Street,
where Ethel Clayton and her mother and the Chases
still lived.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>With the money Mrs. Fuller—an ambitious woman—had
set out to be the leader of Mailsburg’s society.
To a certain degree she had succeeded. Helen was
growing up to be a society devotee and with scarcely
a sensible idea in her head. But she had beauty, and
she made the most of that.</p>
<p>It was the thing, too, to be alive with interest in
some semi-public topic or other; and Helen was alive
to the value of self-advertising. A week never
went by that her name did not appear in the society
news of the city or county papers. She had been out
just as long as Frank Barton had been manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p>She did not really care a fillip for Frank Barton—not
at this time—nor for any other man. But she
thoroughly enjoyed the reputation of having more
men dangling after her than any other girl in Mailsburg.
She even endured the society of that “tame
cat,” Morrison Copley; for at least he counted!</p>
<p>“Really, Mr. Barton,” Helen said, having got the
manager beside her in the driving seat of the car.
“Really, you show very little interest in your country’s
welfare. Don’t you realize <i>yet</i> we are <i>at war</i>?”</p>
<p>Barton’s face was rather glum, but he tried to
speak lightly. “I read something about it in the
papers. I’ve been so extremely busy, Miss Fuller,
I fear I should only know of it from hearsay if the
Germans sailed up the creek and landed at old
Hammerly’s dock.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>“The boys of the National Guard marched away to-day!”
she cried.</p>
<p>“Yes. That does make it look serious,” he agreed
in a graver strain.</p>
<p>“Everybody should do his or her bit, Mr. Barton,”
the girl said with an admonitory air. “I am <i>astonished</i>
at you. As I tell Morry Copley, if I were a man
nothing should keep me out of uniform. I <i>do</i> think
those khaki colors are awfully <i>sweet</i>.”</p>
<p>“I fear,” Barton said grimly, “that the fellows who
put on khaki because it looks ‘sweet’ will not make
particularly good soldiers.”</p>
<p>“Morry Copley, for instance?” and she laughed at
herself and at the non-present Copley. “Oh, well, you
know what I mean. It really seems <i>too</i> bad that so
many of you men in this town are not a bit patriotic.”</p>
<p>“You’ve got me wrong, Miss Fuller,” the manager
said hastily and in considerable earnestness. “I do
not think I lack patriotism. But one must fulfill
one’s duty.”</p>
<p>“Oh, business!” she exclaimed, scornfully.</p>
<p>He was on the defensive. “Your father’s income
from our company is what enables you to drive about
in this car, Miss Fuller,” he said bluntly.</p>
<p>“Now, <i>don’t</i>, for pity’s sake, talk <i>business</i> to me.
I really don’t understand a thing about it. I presume
that girl who passed us just now—Clayton is her name?—may
possess all the business acumen needed. I
haven’t <i>her</i> experience.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>And Frank Barton, startled, wondered why Helen
Fuller had taken the trouble to slur Ethel Clayton.</p>
<p>The Fuller house, built on the exodus of the family
from Burnaby Street, was just the dwelling one knowing
Grandon Fuller and his wife would expect it to
be. It was very large and very important looking,
with a lot of gingerbread trimming about the eaves
and veranda roof and the porte-cochère.</p>
<p>A footman in a conspicuous livery stood at attention
as Helen stopped her car under the covered way.
With a silver whistle this flunky summoned a man
from the garage to take the automobile. Barton
followed his hostess to the other end of the veranda
where quite a party—mostly the younger matrons
and the girls of Mailsburg’s smart set—were gathered.
Tea had been made and two other liveried servants
were rolling service tables about from group to group.</p>
<p>“Well, I have accomplished something,” Helen
said, after an apology for not being at home when
her guests arrived and dropping with assumed weariness
into a comfortable chair. Immediately her
maid put a knitting bag into her lap and her mistress
seized the needles with avidity. “Every stitch counts,
you know,” she went on. “I only wish I might knit
while I drive my machine. But that is impossible.
And I told father I’d drive the car myself and so let
Charles, our chauffeur, enlist. We women must do
our part. Let’s see, Marie; how many of these
sweaters have I done for the soldiers?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>“That is Mam’selle’s second this fortnight,” said
the French maid, without losing her composure.
That she did nine-tenths of the work, Helen merely
rattling the needles while company was present, was
not a matter for the world to know.</p>
<p>“You all know Mr. Barton, I think,” Helen went
on, placing the manager in a chair near her, as though
he were a stray kitten she had picked up on the street
and brought home as a curiosity. “I’ve managed
to interest <i>him</i> in our garden party. Really, he should
be made to do a good deal for the Red Cross. He
has not done a sin-gle sol-i-ta-ry thing as yet for the
<i>cause</i>. I tell him he is a slacker of the first water.”</p>
<p>Some who chanced to hear her smiled. Frank
Barton’s ears fairly burned. It was no joke for him;
yet he admitted that Miss Fuller did not understand—<i>would</i>
not understand, perhaps—why he was not
in khaki.</p>
<p>“Bah Jove!” drawled the high and somewhat
effeminate voice of Morrison Copley, “Mr. Barton
has plenty of company in this burg. I heard old
Hammerly say he thought of offering a reward for
the discovery of a single man within the conscription
age here who joins from patriotic motives. He says
patriotism died out in Mailsburg in the last generation.”</p>
<p>“By the way, Morry,” asked a fellow with the
bulging shoulders of a prizefighter together with a
dissipated face, “how did <i>you</i> get exempted?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>“Dependent parent,” returned Copley. “You
know, mothaw really couldn’t get on without me.”</p>
<p>“That’s true enough,” sneered the other. “Madam
Copley would be lost without her baby boy.”</p>
<p>Morrison Copley did not, however, lack the keener
weapons of retort. “That’s all right, Bradley. I
understand you gave the exemption board the names
of two dependent barkeepers.”</p>
<p>The laugh that followed this sally enabled Frank
Barton to recover his composure. These fellows
boldly acknowledged their lack of patriotic feeling.
He knew that his reasons for claiming exemption
until the Hapwood-Diller Company was in good
shape again were, at least, commendable.</p>
<p>In a desultory way plans were made for the forthcoming
garden party to raise funds for the local Red
Cross chapter. Barton did not find that either his
advice or his efforts were much needed. But he did
get a chance to talk with Miss Fuller; and he was not
a deep enough student of feminine nature to understand
just how shallow she was.</p>
<p>The Fullers were of the best socially there was in
Mailsburg, despite the fact that their money had
come to them comparatively late. Mrs. Fuller’s
maiden name had been Diller, and the Dillers dated
their aristocracy in the county back to pre-Revolution
days. To Barton, whose antecedents had been quite
unimportant, such connections in a social way seemed
worthy.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>“Come again to see me, Mr. Barton, when I am
alone,” Helen whispered, when he rose to follow the
very first group with their knitting bags that made
its departure. “One must give one’s self more or
less to one’s guests when there is a crowd like this.
I want you to take dinner with us soon—quite <i>en
famille</i>. Will you?”</p>
<p>Barton promised. Grandon Fuller had always been
cordial with him, and he was glad to be <i>persona grata</i>
with the family. After all, it meant considerable to
him to be taken up by the Fullers.</p>
<p>He was the only person on this occasion to walk
away from the house. The others rode in some kind
of vehicle. But somebody got into step with Barton
less than ten yards from the gateway.</p>
<p>“What brings you into the swagger part of the
town, Frank?” demanded a harsh voice. “You are
not hatching something with Fuller to double-cross
the rest of the Hapwood-Diller stockholders?”</p>
<p>The young manager knew the character of the
speaker too well to be offended. Macon Hammerly
wore an apparent grouch to shield himself from the
importunities of his fellowmen. He actually could
not say “No” to any request or favor asked, unless
he shouted it.</p>
<p>He was a dry old fellow with stiff, badly brushed
iron-gray hair and an aggressive chin-whisker. He
was the last man in Mailsburg to wear “half leg”
boots and had a local cobbler make them for him.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
He kept a feed and grain store down on the docks
and possessed in all probability more cash in the
bank than any other man in town. But he made no
display of it.</p>
<p>He was distantly related to the Fullers; and he
made no display of that, although Helen called him
“Uncle.” He bent a curious and somewhat disapproving
eye upon Barton as he waited for his
answer.</p>
<p>“I was just calling there.”</p>
<p>“Huh! On whom?”</p>
<p>“Miss Fuller took me up into her car and brought
me over. It seems there is to be a garden party for
the Red Cross——”</p>
<p>“Expected it must be something about a cross,”
grumbled Macon Hammerly. “Red Cross or what
not, it will be the double-cross for you if you don’t
look out. You’ve nothing in common, Frank, with
that dogfennel.”</p>
<p>“With <i>what</i>?” asked Barton, chuckling. “That’s a
new one!”</p>
<p>“A new name for that inconsequential, useless
crowd that circle about Grandon Fuller’s gal? Huh!
D’you know any better name for them? There
ain’t nothing more useless and picayune along the
road than dogfennel. That whole bunch isn’t worth
the powder to blow it to Halifax!”</p>
<p>“‘Dogfennel’,” and Barton still chuckled. “I don’t
know but you are rather hard on our common may-weed.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>
But I grant you that some of those people
I met back there are quite as futile as the name implies.
But Miss Fuller herself! She is a remarkably
pretty girl.”</p>
<p>The old man in the linen duster and the broad-brimmed
hat was quite as emphatic as Barton expected
him to be. “So’s dogfennel pretty—if you
like weeds. I don’t want to see you mixing in with
that crowd, Frank. How’s business?”</p>
<p>“Better. Had to turn down a big order to-day, but
I think we were justified in doing so.”</p>
<p>“Huh! Who says so? You and Jim Mayberry?”
growled Hammerly, who kept in quite close touch
with the factory affairs.</p>
<p>“Not altogether,” Barton smilingly replied. “We
took the advice of Miss Clayton.”</p>
<p>“Huh! You <i>did</i>?” Hammerly listened quietly to the
manager’s explanation, commenting in his usual tart
way, but with open satisfaction: “You do show some
sense once in a while, Frank. She’s got a head on
her, that Ethel Clayton. And you are right, I’ll
bet a cooky! The Bogata people are due to bust inside
of three months. Mark my words.”</p>
<p>The two men separated at a corner and Barton
strode on to his boarding house and the dinner which
he knew would be dished up cold to him now. Mrs.
Trevor played no table favorites in her ménage.
The manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>
not happy. His reflections were tinged with a hue
of disgust at his own equivocal situation.</p>
<p>He knew he had good and sufficient reason for not
enlisting the minute of the declaration that a state
of war with Germany existed. The same reason had
kept him at home when many of his comrades in the
Guard had gone to the Mexican Border.</p>
<p>He had been spending his strength and thought
to one end since being placed in charge of the Hapwood-Diller
Manufacturing Company. The war had
struck the concern hard, cutting off or doubling the
price of supplies without broadening the market for
manufactured wares or increasing the profit on them.</p>
<p>Upon the dividends of the company many families
in Mailsburg depended for their very daily bread.
Had the dividends been reduced or even passed for
several successive quarters, the Fullers would have
got along all right; but there were stockholders whose
livelihood depended utterly upon the factory running
on full time and turning a profit on every dollar’s
worth of product that left the shipping room. And
Frank Barton seemed to be the only man to keep it
so running.</p>
<p>For the most part these needy folk were widows or
orphans or old people past working age, who had
received their stock from one or another of the original
owners of the factory. These helpless people Barton
had felt particularly his charge. To throw up his
job and join the colors might ruin the small fry depending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
upon the success of the Hapwood-Diller
Company’s affairs. Until of late he had scarcely
found breathing space to think of anything save the
business of the factory.</p>
<p>But now! The boys marching away earlier in the
day had stabbed Frank Barton to the quick. He
was not a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. It
was only those who knew him best who suspected
the rankling wound he suffered when his course was
unfavorably compared with that of the guardsmen
whose brother-in-arms he had been.</p>
<p>Even Helen Fuller had accused him of being a
slacker, and had compared him with Morry Copley
and that Bradley fellow. Barton’s gorge rose as he
thought of this.</p>
<p>“A slacker, eh?” he muttered to himself. “A
slacker, am I?”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br>
<small>THE SKINNERS</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Jim Mayberry</span> was smoking his second cigarette
when a girl came out of the main door of the factory
offices. She was a slim, rather startled looking girl.
Her flaxen hair was pulled back so tightly as to raise
her eyebrows perceptibly; this opened very wide her
eyes and seemed even to pull the point of her nose
up a little and raise her upper lip to display two little
rabbit teeth.</p>
<p>“Hello, Skinner,” said the superintendent. “Isn’t
Ethel ’most ready?”</p>
<p>“Hello, Jim Mayberry,” responded the girl, who
felt no obligation to show the superintendent any
particular respect outside the factory. “Going to
take me home in your flivver?”</p>
<p>“Aren’t you afraid to ride with me?” asked the
man with a slow smile.</p>
<p>“Nope. You try to get funny with <i>me</i> and I’ll
scratch your eyes out.”</p>
<p>“My!” drawled Mayberry, “aren’t you the catty
thing?”</p>
<p>“You’d think so,” rejoined the flat-chested girl
with all the strutting boastfulness of a boy. “No
feller’s ever going to kiss <i>me</i> if I don’t want him to.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>“I bet you!” agreed the superintendent with mock
admiration. “But where’s Ethel?”</p>
<p>“You aren’t waiting for her, are you, Jim?” the
slim girl asked, giggling.</p>
<p>“I thought I was.”</p>
<p>“Then there’s another thought coming to you,”
declared the delighted Skinner. “Ethel went long
ago—out through the side gate. Guess she must
have suspected you’d be waiting here.”</p>
<p>Mayberry uttered a brief and impolite expletive.
That did not trouble Mabel Skinner. She lived in
a house full of rough men. Her mother was dead
and an older sister kept house for the Skinners. The
children of Sam Skinner had not been brought up
according to the Puritan acceptance of the term.
Like Topsy, they had “just growed.”</p>
<p>“She wouldn’t ride in that flivver with you anyway,”
Mabel Skinner added. “But I would.”</p>
<p>“Jump in, then, Little Skinner,” the superintendent
said, without further advertising his chagrin.</p>
<p>“I hope my Sunday School teacher won’t see me,”
the girl observed, getting in beside him quickly.
“If she does she will know I am riding fast to perdition.
And <i>do</i> make your old rattle-bang go as fast
as possible, Jim. I just love to scoot over the road.
Gee, if I’d only been made a boy instead of a girl,
I’d have been a jockey.”</p>
<p>“Hear the girl!” chuckled Mayberry, who was
really after all too good-natured to be spiteful to his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>
guest. “You’ll be up in one of these flying machines
yet.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that would be grand! I’d go to France and
join the flying corps. That girl from Texas that got
over there with the first batch of Yankee soldiers—did
you read about her? They got on to her and
sent her back. That’s because she got married to
one of the buddies. Catch <i>me</i>! I wouldn’t marry
the best man alive.”</p>
<p>“You won’t,” prophesied Jim Mayberry, still
chuckling.</p>
<p>“Smartie! Anyhow, I wouldn’t fall for any man
I’ve ever seen yet. Not even Mr. Barton,” she added,
as though there might be some doubt in her mind
about the general manager.</p>
<p>“Humph! who has fallen for him?” demanded the
superintendent suspiciously.</p>
<p>“Every girl in town but me,” declared Mabel
Skinner promptly, but grinning impishly, “He’s an
awfully nice man, is Mr. Barton.”</p>
<p>“Yes. I’d fall for him myself if I were a girl, I
guess,” Mayberry agreed.</p>
<p>“Yes—you—would! Say, that’s my corner!”</p>
<p>“I know. But I’m going to spin you around the
reservoir and bring you home the other way.”</p>
<p>“Oh, bully!” ejaculated the girl, fairly jumping in
her seat. “I’m being run away with by a man.
Never thought it would happen to me. I really<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>
wish you wasn’t so trifling, Jim Mayberry. I’d
maybe sue you for breach of promise.”</p>
<p>“Then I’m safe, am I?” he asked.</p>
<p>“As far as I am concerned you are. I wouldn’t
really marry you on a bet, Jim. Don’t you know
that?”</p>
<p>He was highly amused. Mabel Skinner’s tart
tongue always delighted him. She lived in one of
the poorer quarters of the town. When he finally
brought the machine into her street it created a sensation.
People left their supper tables to see Mabel
Skinner brought home in the superintendent’s car.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter, Mab? Broke a leg?” demanded
one lout of a boy, with an impudent grin for Mayberry,
and who was just slipping out of the Skinners’
gate. This was “Boots” Skinner, next younger of
the clan than Mabel.</p>
<p>“Both of ’em, or you wouldn’t catch me ruining
my reputation riding home with Mr. Mayberry.
Don’t tell anybody, Boots.”</p>
<p>The superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller factory
found that it was he who felt some confusion in bringing
Mabel home. The latter took her time in getting
out of the car.</p>
<p>“I’m awfully much obliged to you, Mr. Mayberry,”
she said, in a shrill and penetrating voice, so that the
interested neighbors could all hear. “I don’t know
what I should have done if you hadn’t brought me.
Walked, I guess. Well! ‘Over the river!’”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>She popped into the house before he could get the
starter into action under the fire of the neighbors’
chuckles. They all knew Mabel Skinner; and most
of them had sized up Jim Mayberry for what he was,
too.</p>
<p>Mayberry drove down into Mailsburg’s business
quarter and stopped before the Bellevue Hotel. He
often took his dinner there and spent the evening, as
well, in some upper room where there were shaded
lights, much cigar smoke, the clink of glasses and the
rattle of poker chips.</p>
<p>The superintendent had been born and brought up
in Mailsburg, as Frank Barton had been; but his
family was now scattered. He and Barton had been
the closest of chums at school. Mayberry owned
quite as bright a mind as the general manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company; but he lacked the balance
of his friend.</p>
<p>Had it not been for the inspiration of Barton’s
companionship and example Mayberry would never
have obtained the eminence he had in the factory.
In truth, his old chum had actually boosted Mayberry
into the superintendent’s job after having been
himself elected manager of the concern. Not that
Mayberry was not well fitted for this position. But
he lacked that quality of ambition to have gained
it for himself without Frank Barton’s good offices.
At that, he lacked the grace of gratitude.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>The Bellevue was the gathering place of the sporting
men of the town. When Mayberry came out
from dinner, Mr. Grandon Fuller occupied one of the
easy chairs on the porch. Fuller’s taste for society
was not like that of his wife and daughter. He was
a big, pursy man with a shock of white hair and a
ruddy countenance. He had a hail-fellow-well-met
air for most occasions, and his jovial manner made
him popular with most people. In local politics he
had some prominence.</p>
<p>“Hey, young man!” he called to Mayberry, “you’ve
no engagement, have you? Smith is getting up a
party for a little game. Will you join us?”</p>
<p>“Not to-night, Colonel,” returned the superintendent,
giving Fuller a handle to his name that always
delighted the rich man. He had been on the governor’s
staff once. “I am sorry. I have an appointment.”</p>
<p>“Tut, tut! can’t you let the girls alone for one night,
Son?” and Fuller’s laugh was unctuous.</p>
<p>“’Pon my word it’s business.”</p>
<p>“Thought nobody had to trouble their heads about
business up at the factory except Barton?”</p>
<p>“But Barton may not be there always,” laughed
the superintendent, although the suggestion of the
manager’s omnipotence did not please him. Everybody
praised Frank Barton’s business acumen. Mayberry,
being Barton’s close friend, knew just how weak<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
the fellow really was! This was Mayberry’s thought;
but he made no display of this feeling, saying:</p>
<p>“It really is business, Colonel. I am sorry not
to be able to join you and the other gentlemen.
But we really all have to work up there at the factory.
Barton may get the bulk of the credit. You know
how it is when a fellow once gets into the limelight.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” chuckled Fuller. “But they tell me a lime
never gets into the limelight. Don’t tell me Frank
Barton is to be counted among the citrus fruit.”</p>
<p>“Never!” responded Mayberry. “But, then, there
are others working for the Hapwood-Diller Company
too who are not lemons. Good-night.”</p>
<p>He went down the steps whistling cheerfully and
Mr. Fuller looked quizzically after him.</p>
<p>“Bright young fellow, just the same,” murmured
the man. “Perhaps may be made more useful, even,
than Barton. But I fear neither Helen nor the wife
would stand for <i>him</i> as a dinner guest; whereas,
Barton——”</p>
<p>These cryptic observations were unheard by Mayberry
of course. And the frown on his brow belied
his cheerful whistle and airy remarks to Mr. Fuller.
He got into his car, started it, and drove away from
the hotel with the secret feeling that he would enjoy
running over a dog.</p>
<p>He kept on through the old part of Mailsburg and
down past the docks and over the Stone Bridge. The
creek was a wide, oilily flowing stream—save in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
time of the spring freshets. He took the Creek Road
and rolled easily out of town and along past the farms
and wooded strips which intervened between Mailsburg
and Norville.</p>
<p>He drove slowly and looked at the illuminated dial
of the clock before him frequently. It was plain
that he had a rendezvous here in the open. Some
one has said: “If you have a secret to tell, select the
middle of a ten-acre lot.” Mayberry’s appointment
suggested secrecy, for he finally stopped near the
bank of the creek with an open, sloping field on the
other hand, and no cover but a rock beside the road.</p>
<p>There was shadow enough about the rock, however,
to protect the figure of a man on the landward
side. But the scent of his tobacco permeated the air.</p>
<p>“Hello, Blaisdell?” Jim Mayberry said quietly
and questioningly, having brought his car to a stop
just opposite this rock.</p>
<p>“Welcome, dear boy,” was the prompt reply. The
waiting man stretched his long limbs and came out
of the shadow, still puffing his pipe, to rest a foot
upon the step of the car. Mayberry lit a cigarette
and pinched out the glowing end of the match before
dropping it. “What’s the news?” asked Blaisdell.</p>
<p>“Kind of bad—for you and me,” Mayberry admitted.</p>
<p>“What do you mean? Doesn’t that order go
through?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>“It may not. I’m no intriguer, Blaisdell. I can
keep you informed; but I am not up in diplomacy.
Barton has heard some yarn about you fellows. He
is for turning the order down—flat.”</p>
<p>“Can’t you influence him? I thought you and he
were thicker than the hair on a dog’s neck.”</p>
<p>“We’ve always been chums,” drawled Mayberry.
“That doesn’t give me any hold over Frank’s processes
of reasoning. And he can talk me off my feet.
I didn’t agree to do the impossible, Blaisdell. If the
order goes through the best I can do is to rush it.”</p>
<p>“Yet you expect to get your rake-off,” sneered the
other.</p>
<p>“That’s my legitimate graft. It’s for letting
everything go through smoothly. You know, in my
position, I can favor your company, Blaisdell.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t seem that you can—not if this order
clogs the chute. I am frank to tell you, Jim, we’ve
got to get those goods without question or we shall
be in untold trouble.”</p>
<p>“Ye-as,” drawled the superintendent, “so I inferred.
That is what is bothering Barton. He seems to be
wise to the state of your credit.”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t <i>know</i> it,” snapped the other. “He
only suspects. Nobody knows it but Billings, Hempstead,
me and—you.”</p>
<p>“And I’m sitting tight and saying nothing. I want
my rake-off on the order of course—By jinks, I <i>need</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>
it! Money is as scarce with me just now as gold filling
in a hen’s teeth.”</p>
<p>“Then do something to help us,” urged Blaisdell.</p>
<p>“I’ll do all I can. If I were in charge—Oh, well!
I <i>could</i> do something in that case.”</p>
<p>“Say! any chance of that happening?” demanded
the other and with eagerness.</p>
<p>“I—don’t—know. There may be. Frank has got
the war fever. Fact! Any fellow that got exempted
as easy as he did——”</p>
<p>“By the way,” asked Blaisdell, “how did you get
past the board?”</p>
<p>“Conscientious objector,” replied Mayberry glibly.
“Sure! My mother and father were Quakers and I
often attended the Friends’ Meeting House,” and he
laughed.</p>
<p>“You are a liar, Jim,” said the other frankly.
“The Quakers are putting their young men into the
Red Cross and all such work. That claim don’t go.
I believe it cost you money. Doc Flammer has
bought a new runabout—and it’s a better car than
you drive, Jim. I believe that foxy medico knows
how to feather his nest.”</p>
<p>“I really have a bad heart,” said the superintendent
of the Hapwood-Diller Company seriously. “Quite
a murmur. You can hear it sometimes without the
stethoscope.”</p>
<p>“But the doc never advised you to cut out the
tobacco, did he?” drily queried Blaisdell, as Mayberry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>
lit another cigarette at the coal of his first.
“Now, see here, to get back to biz: You say Barton
has the fever?”</p>
<p>“He’s wanted to go all along. You should hear
him talk! He makes me sick!” scoffed the superintendent.
“If he should go I shall step into his shoes
<i>pro tem</i>. He wants to go to the officers’ training camp
at Lake Quehasset. <i>Then</i> I might be able to help
you fellows—and myself—Blaisdell.”</p>
<p>“You think Barton will immediately turn down
our order? Before he goes away—if he does go?”</p>
<p>“I believe he has already.” Mayberry gave no
particulars, but he spoke of the letter the manager
of the Hapwood-Diller Company had ordered written
that afternoon. It was not to his advantage to say
anything about Ethel Clayton and the confidence
Barton had in her good sense and ability.</p>
<p>“Postpone the sending of that letter, Jim,” said
Blaisdell hastily. “It has not left the office yet,
has it?”</p>
<p>“I do not believe so. It was too late for the last
mail,” Mayberry agreed. But he was puzzled.</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what I mean,” Blaisdell said, leaning
nearer to the superintendent. He laid a hand upon
the latter’s shoulder. His lips were close to Mayberry’s
ear. Nobody could have heard then what he
said, not if they had been at Blaisdell’s elbow. And
there was nobody so near. A few minutes later the
superintendent turned his car and started back toward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>
Mailsburg while Blaisdell strolled away in the opposite
direction. Then it was that a cramped figure
rolled out from the shadow on the creek side of the
great rock.</p>
<p>“Those two chumps purty near made me late
setting my lines,” observed Boots Skinner under his
breath. “The moon’ll be up in a few minutes and
then mebbe I’d git nabbed.</p>
<p>“Old Man Hammerly says that if I’m caught doing
this ag’in he’ll give me all the laws allows—an’ then
some. The old jackdaw! I bet he never gits the
chance.</p>
<p>“That’s the way. Ain’t no chance for a poor feller,
jest as dad says. Such rich chaps as them two can
plan to do all the devilment that they want, and nobody
dast touch ’em. But me! I ain’t let to ketch
a mess o’ fish in peace. Huh! Jest the same, me an’
dad will have a fish-fry for breakfast,” and he grinned
in the darkness, carefully baiting his hooks.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br>
<small>THE DREAM OF A STAR</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Clayton</span> was a Diller. She often stated
this fact with pride.</p>
<p>“The Dillers, my dear, are among the very oldest
and the very best families in the country; and when
one has family as every sensible person recognizes,
money is of secondary importance,” Ethel’s mother
insisted over and over, in season and out.</p>
<p>“All very well, dear,” agreed the girl cheerfully.
“But money is more essential to our daily comfort
than blue blood. I presume I am glad I have Diller
blood in my veins. I am much gladder I have Diller
brains in my head; for they enable me to earn twenty
dollars a week—more than any other girl earns, I
do believe, in Mailsburg.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Clayton, with all her horror of things common,
could not deny that Israel Diller had been the saviour
of the family by his business ability. He went into
trade and he made good in it. By grace of his doing
so, and leaving her a few shares of the Hapwood-Diller
Company—and Grandon Fuller’s wife a good
many—both the Claytons and the Fullers were benefitted.
Indeed, Mrs. Clayton and Ethel lived much
more comfortably in the little cottage at the end of
Burnaby Street by grace of the dividends from those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
shares than they had while Mr. Clayton was
alive.</p>
<p>“But I sometimes wonder,” Mrs. Clayton sighed,
“how it came about that Mehitable Fuller and I
should have been so unevenly treated by Great-uncle
Israel. Mehitable never did a hand’s turn for old
Mr. Diller in her life. While you can remember yourself,
Ethel, although you were but a tiny girl, that the
old gentleman was brought here that time he had
typhoid and he was a care on my hands for six
months.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mother!”</p>
<p>“I’m not begrudging the care,” her mother hastened
to say. “And of course his lawyer afterward brought
me the money for his board—six dollars a week for
twenty-seven weeks. And I signed a paper saying
it was all I could expect. Still—Well! if he had been
alone in his own home and had had to hire a trained
nurse and all that he’d have paid out a lot more money
than he did.”</p>
<p>“Now, Mother, never mind all that,” Ethel urged.</p>
<p>“No, I realize it doesn’t sound nice,” Mrs. Clayton
agreed. “But it seems funny. When I see those
Fullers driving around so haughtily, and read about
Mehitable, that I went to school with, and that pug-nosed
girl of hers——”</p>
<p>“Mercy! don’t let anybody hear you speak of Helen
Fuller’s nose in such terms,” laughed Ethel. “And
Helen is pretty. You’ve got to acknowledge that.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>“Her nose <i>is</i> a pug,” declared Mrs. Clayton.
“That’s got nothing to do with those stocks. Great-uncle
Israel’s will was peculiar. So they all say. No
administrator mentioned. And he died with Gran
Fuller right in the house——”</p>
<p>“Don’t!” begged Ethel. “You must not intimate
any wrongdoing, when there can have been no wrongdoing.”</p>
<p>“What do you know about it? And you but a
chit of a girl at the time!” demanded Mrs. Clayton.
“Anyway, Gran Fuller was there, and he found the
will. Mr. Mestinger, the lawyer, was dead then.”</p>
<p>“But the witnesses were alive if the lawyer wasn’t.
Of course it was Mr. Diller’s honest will.”</p>
<p>“And he gave all that lump of money to Mehitable
who never scarcely spoke to him, and only a little,
meaching few stocks of the Hapwood-Diller Company
to me. Oh, well, small favors thankfully received.
The money’s very welcome every quarter.”</p>
<p>Of course, Ethel was the recipient of a fairly comfortable
salary. But they could not have lived so
nicely as they did upon her weekly stipend only.
Moreover, it was but recently that the girl was able
to earn the amount at present paid her.</p>
<p>“And there was a time,” pursued Mrs. Clayton on
this particular evening, “when I came near selling
the shares for a song.” She and Ethel were sitting,
after the dinner dishes were cleared up, on the sheltered
porch. “Grandon Fuller made me an offer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>
for my stock. That was just before Mr. Barton was
made manager, and people said the company was
going to fail.”</p>
<p>“Mr. Barton has done wonders,” declared the girl
with admiration.</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t know,” responded her mother deprecatingly.
“I suppose business just chanced to
change. But it’s lucky we held on to our stock.”</p>
<p>“It was Mr. Barton who saved us and the rest of
the small stockholders,” the girl said firmly.</p>
<p>“Well, I suppose you must say so. I presume you
feel some gratitude to him for raising your pay. You
never would have got it without his say-so.”</p>
<p>“I hope I earn it,” Ethel observed with some sharpness.
“I believe I am worthy of my wages, just as
Mr. Barton is worthy of the credit of having put the
Hapwood-Diller Company on its feet.”</p>
<p>“Still talking shop?” asked the cheerful voice of
Benway Chase. He had come up the walk without
the widow and her daughter hearing him till he spoke.</p>
<p>“Oh, Ethel is singing the praises of that wonderful
Mr. Barton, as usual,” her mother said.</p>
<p>“I’ll join in,” Ben Chase chuckled, and he sat down
on the step of the porch to fill and light his pipe.
“We’ve got to hand it to Mr. Barton, Mrs. Clayton.
He did another good deed to-day. Promised to take
me into the offices.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Ben!” exclaimed the girl in sheer delight.
“Did you speak to him as I advised you?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>“Certainly did. I got tired of waiting on the pleasure
of those other people who had promised me a job.
I have spent every cent we can afford getting a business
course and just because I am left-handed the
business men I have seen hem and haw over hiring
me—or even giving me a chance to show them I am
as quick as a fellow with two hands.”</p>
<p>“Dear me, Bennie, don’t talk in that way,” murmured
Mrs. Clayton.</p>
<p>“Nobody wants a fellow with one hand—not
really!” exclaimed the young man with vigor. “They
won’t take me in the army—though a fellow could
work a machine gun very well with one paw,” and
he laughed without managing to get much mirth
into the sound.</p>
<p>“But your Mr. Barton is different,” he added,
turning to Ethel. “I saw him to-day at lunch hour—while
you were out, Ethel. He never said a word
about my bum wing. By the way, did you know
he was going away?”</p>
<p>“Who’s going away?” asked Mrs. Clayton, scenting
gossip.</p>
<p>“Not Mr. Barton?” cried her daughter quickly.</p>
<p>“Spoke as though he expected to be absent from
the offices in the near future. Said you and that
Jim Mayberry would break me in all right. What
did he mean if it wasn’t that he expected to be absent?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>The girl looked at him breathlessly and her face
was actually pale. Mrs. Clayton drawled:</p>
<p>“I suppose he must mean to take a vacation.”</p>
<p>“That’s not it, is it?” Benway Chase asked Ethel,
realizing that she was deeply moved.</p>
<p>“It’s the war!” gasped the girl.</p>
<p>“The war?” rejoined her mother. “What’s that
to do with Mr. Barton? He’s exempt, isn’t he?”</p>
<p>“He will enlist. I knew he would!” The girl’s
hands were clasped in real agony and her voice showed
imminent tears. “Oh, I knew he would!”</p>
<p>“Not really?” exclaimed Benway, forgetting to
keep his pipe alight. “Mr. Barton can’t be spared,
can he?”</p>
<p>“I suspected all along how he felt about it,” moaned
the girl. “Ever since April when war was declared—even
before.”</p>
<p>“But, goodness! there are so many other men to
go,” cried her mother. “And you were just saying
that he was necessary to the well-being of the Hapwood-Diller
Company, Ethel. Surely he will not
desert us.”</p>
<p>“The business is in very good shape again—thanks
to him,” Ethel answered, trying to recover her composure.
“I suppose he feels that now, at least, he
can go to the officers’ training camp. And if we get
along all right I just know he will go to France.”</p>
<p>Benway whistled—low and thoughtfully. “He’s
that kind of a chap, I guess,” he observed. “Goodness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>
knows, this town is full of those who think
differently. The boards had the hardest time getting
their full quota for this first draft. There’s
got to be a general awakening before the second call
comes——”</p>
<p>“But war is dreadful!” cried Mrs. Clayton.</p>
<p>“It must be. But we haven’t come to a realization
of it yet or we’d all be glad to try to help keep it in
Europe, instead of letting it dribble over here after
militarism has ruined the less prepared countries
over there. This war is going to mean a good deal.
The government is awfully particular about the
men they take right now; but they won’t be so particular
before it is all over.</p>
<p>“Why!” cried the young fellow with a break in his
voice that showed a deeper emotion, “even the Red
Cross or the Y. M. C. A. won’t accept for service a
fellow with a single solitary thing the matter with
him!”</p>
<p>Ethel, who had slipped down into a seat on the
step beside him, suddenly patted his shoulder in a
sisterly way. She knew that he had tried to serve
his country under the banner of the Cross of Peace
and had been refused because of his withered arm.</p>
<p>“Heigho!” added Benway, shrugging his shoulders
and swallowing his emotion, “that’s neither here nor
there. Mr. Barton spoke as though he expected to
leave soon, anyway. I expect Ethel, here, will pretty
near be boss of those offices while he is gone. How<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>
about it, Ethel? Going to be a hard taskmaster to
yours truly?”</p>
<p>“I am afraid if Mr. Barton goes that my influence
there will be curbed rather than increased,” the girl
said with gravity.</p>
<p>“No!”</p>
<p>“Naturally Mr. Mayberry will be boss. Mr. Mayberry
does not consider me as capable as does Mr.
Barton.”</p>
<p>“Jim Mayberry!” exclaimed Ben. “He’s dead in
love with you, they say.”</p>
<p>The girl’s head came up and she turned a haughty
look upon her friend.</p>
<p>“Do you consider that complimentary to me?”
she demanded.</p>
<p>“No. But complimentary to his good sense,”
returned Benway. “I don’t know much about Mayberry;
only that he hangs about the Bellevue too
much.”</p>
<p>“You’ve said it all,” Ethel declared, with less
sternness. “I do not like Mr. Mayberry.”</p>
<p>“All right. I shan’t like him, either, then,” said
Benway cheerfully. “But, goodness, girl! you can’t
blame men for falling in love with you. I wonder
the whole town doesn’t tail along after you when you
walk down the street.”</p>
<p>She laughed at him then—and with him.</p>
<p>“There is one thing about your compliments,
Ben,” she said. “They may lack grace; but they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>
are unmistakable. Ridiculous! There are hundreds
of girls in Mailsburg better looking than I am.”</p>
<p>“Now, did I say anything about looks?” he asked
her wickedly. “It’s your sweet disposition that
makes you so many friends.”</p>
<p>“Like Jim Mayberry, I suppose?” she said in some
disgust.</p>
<p>They continued to wrangle in a friendly way. Mrs.
Clayton, frankly yawning, bade them good-night.
The moment her mother withdrew Ethel’s manner
changed. She removed herself a little from Benway’s
vicinity and her witticisms ceased.</p>
<p>“I believe I shall retire early myself, Ben,” she
said. “This has been a trying day. I—I shall be
glad to have you in the offices with us.”</p>
<p>“Shall you?” There was something in his tone that
increased her seriousness.</p>
<p>“If I can do anything there to help you, let me do
it,” she said earnestly. “You know we have always
been such chums, Ben.”</p>
<p>“Haven’t we?” Again the disturbing accent. She
started to rise. He caught her hand. “Wait,” he
said. “Let me say a little something to you, Ethel.”</p>
<p>“Ben! Ben! Had you better? You know——”</p>
<p>“I know—everything you can tell me,” he interrupted
bitterly. “I know I am only half a man. A
fellow shy a wing hasn’t much chance in this world.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>
I ought to know it after all my experience. Especially
as the folks have no money to back me. But
I have a whole brain——”</p>
<p>“I’ve always told you that, Ben,” she hastened to
say. “A perfectly good brain. I would not harp
so much on that withered arm.”</p>
<p>“No, perhaps you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t unless
the old arm happened to be hitched to your shoulder,
as it is to mine. No, it is easy enough to say to a
cripple, ‘Forget it.’ Wait till you try it yourself!
Though, Heaven forbid! I hope you will never suffer
such a handicap, Ethel.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Benway!”</p>
<p>“Now, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, Ethel,”
he returned, and patted her hand. “Fact is, I feel
rather toppy to-night myself. I know that Mr. Barton
is taking me on for just what he thinks is in me,
and no more. He must think that a withered arm
will not make me less useful around the offices of the
Hapwood-Diller Company. Influence is not getting
me this footing.</p>
<p>“And he was kind enough to say,” went on the boy,
“that he saw no reason why I should not rise there
as he had risen. He told me how he began in one
of the shops and worked up. Of course, I am not
beginning just in that way; but he says that a practical
knowledge of the mechanical end of the business
is not absolutely necessary to advancement.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>“If I make good, Ethel—if I prove that the stuff
is in me to get up in the business world, after all——”</p>
<p>“Of all your friends I shall be the one who will
be the most delighted, Ben,” she interrupted, rising
now with finality. “Don’t forget that I have always
said it was in you to make something of yourself.
Even if your parents could not afford to send you
to college, I know—absolutely know—you will make
your mark.”</p>
<p>“Well, yes,” he said, rather piqued that she had
not let him finish. She stood above him now, looking
down.</p>
<p>“Good-night, Benway. I suppose you will come
to the offices on Monday?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I’ll see you then, Ethel, every day,” he said
wistfully.</p>
<p>“Good-night,” she repeated and went quickly
within. Once inside the screen door she watched his
shadowy figure down the path. “‘No influence’?”
she murmured. “He does not suspect how I fairly
had to beg Mr. Barton to give him a chance! Poor
Benway! Poor, poor boy!”</p>
<p>The girl went on to her bedroom. She stood a
moment in the darkness.</p>
<p>“Frank Barton going—leaving—” she gasped. “Oh,
why can’t he see? Why can’t he see?” she added,
moaning.</p>
<p>Then she began her preparations for bed.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>Benway Chase crossed the road and entered the
field that divided his own home from the end of Burnaby
Street. This was a surburban locality. There
was the fine smell of new-mown hay in his nostrils.
Half way across the field he stumbled upon a cock
of hay that had been thrown up for the night, and
he fell upon it, rolling upon his back luxuriously and
gazing back.</p>
<p>There was a light in a certain window of the Clayton
Cottage. He had watched it many a night, for
he knew that it was the window of Ethel’s room.
Above the rooftree hung a brilliant star. He had
watched that, too, often and again. And when the
light in Ethel’s room was snuffed out he fixed his
eyes on the star and dreamed.</p>
<p>It was only a boy’s dream at best. It was a foolish
dream, perhaps. But Benway Chase often
dreamed it.</p>
<p>He was fully a year older than Ethel Clayton;
but sometimes she made him feel very much younger
than she. Dreamer by nature, he; and she one of
those practical souls that chafe in the bodies of
women. At least, they chafe where women’s growth
is hampered. But Ethel was numbered of the emancipated.
She was a business woman. Moreover,
she was a successful business woman.</p>
<p>As she had said, no girl in Mailsburg in all probability
earned a larger wage than she did. She had a
grasp upon the details of the business of the Hapwood-Diller<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
Company that fitted her without question
for a position as important as that of Jim Mayberry
for instance. Indeed, she was better informed
and more capable than even Frank Barton realized.</p>
<p>The manager merely found her surprisingly helpful
on occasion. He respected her; he admired her good
business sense displayed at these times. Ethel Clayton
did not wish to be admired by the manager for
any such reason.</p>
<p>Perhaps hers, too, was a dream of a star.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br>
<small>TWO GOOD-BYES</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">After</span> the porter, who dusted and removed the
waste paper, Mabel Skinner was the first of the office
force to arrive at the Hapwood-Diller Company the
next morning.</p>
<p>Her startled face was preternaturally grave on this
occasion. Before she even removed her hat and the
tight little jacket she wore, the girl went to the mail
basket on Ethel Clayton’s desk, dumped the outgoing
letters on its flat surface, and ran through them
quickly, scrutinizing each address. She did this
twice and then puzzlement, as well as gravity, showed
in her sharp features. She stacked the letters slowly
again in the basket, deep in thought.</p>
<p>Then she went to the letter files. She found under
the B heading a quantity of correspondence relating
to the Bogata Company of Norville. But there was
nothing of recent date. It seemed no letter had been
written the day before by the Hapwood-Diller Company
to the Bogata people.</p>
<p>“Well,” the girl sighed, “I know Boots is an awful
liar. But this time he fooled me. Guess I’ll keep
my nose out of what don’t concern me. But that
Boots!”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>And that evening she gave the recreant Boots a
most decisive thrashing out behind the barn. For
any older Skinner that could not trounce a younger
Skinner, male or female, was not worthy of the clan.</p>
<p>Mabel’s appearance at her desk when the rest of
the office force arrived caused much comment.</p>
<p>“Life is short and time is fleeting,” said Sydney,
the bookkeeper. “We are warned of the Great
Change to come. Little Skinner is here on time and
at work.”</p>
<p>“That happens three days before you die, Syd,”
responded Mabel sepulchrally, and made no further
explanation, not even to Ethel.</p>
<p>Ethel went about her work with some feeling of
depression. Barton had said nothing directly to her
about going away. Indeed, he was not likely to take
Ethel Clayton into his confidence in private matters.
Yet she understood now, from several things he had
been doing of late, that he had it in mind to absent
himself from the offices.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry was in conference with the general
manager on more than one occasion during the next
few days. Ethel could only be thankful that the
superintendent seemed to have too much on his
mind to bother her. He did not even mention her
refusal to ride with him in his car. But the girl
thought more than once of the possibility of Mayberry’s
becoming objectionable when Barton was
gone and he, the superintendent, had charge of affairs.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>On Monday Benway Chase came into the offices.
Ethel had paved the way for his reception by
her associates, and Benway was made to feel
welcome at once. Only Mayberry seemed surprised
to see him.</p>
<p>“Why, say!” drawled the superintendent, “what
does Barton expect to make of <i>you</i>?”</p>
<p>“I’m after your job, Mr. Mayberry,” responded
Benway, smiling into the rather sneering face of the
older man. “You don’t mind, do you?”</p>
<p>“Not if you can cop it,” said the other. “But it
takes a two-fisted man to handle some of the huskies
we’ve got in the shops. Don’t forget that.”</p>
<p>The intimation was brutal, but the boy with the
withered arm only paled a little about the lips.</p>
<p>“You know,” he said coolly, “we left-handed chaps
have all the luck. Ask any ball fan.”</p>
<p>Mayberry laughed shortly and passed on. Ethel
was particularly kind to Benway for the rest of that
day, and Mabel Skinner, who also had heard the
superintendent, stuck out her tongue at his retreating
figure.</p>
<p>“He’s such a nasty thing!” she whispered to Ethel.
“I wish his old flivver would try to climb a telegraph
pole with him—or go into the ditch!”</p>
<p>For Skinner was a strong partisan of Ethel’s.
Her friends were Skinner’s friends and her enemies
Skinner’s particular foes. Besides, the younger girl<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>
had at once taken a fancy to Benway Chase. In
looks alone the young fellow had the advantage of
any man Mabel Skinner had ever seen before—not
barring the general manager, whom she worshipped
as a kind of god.</p>
<p>A smile from Benway Chase would turn almost
any girl’s head. He had the darlingest curls! His
complexion was finer and clearer than any girl’s
Skinner knew. There were shades of brown and
red in his cheeks that reminded her of a ripe russet
apple.</p>
<p>“My!” she whispered to herself, her china-blue eyes
staring from her head more staringly than usual,
“wouldn’t I just like to put my two hands into
his hair and pull it—ever so gently? And his eyes
are just as lovely as our setter-pup’s. Oh, my!
And of course he’s set his heart on Ethel!”</p>
<p>She was not jealous of Ethel. Skinner was much
too modest to feel such an emotion for one whom
she so much admired. She considered Benway Chase
as far above her as the moon and stars. She thought
them beautiful in much the same way as she admired
Benway.</p>
<p>In the middle of that week Ethel was called into
the manager’s office at an unusual hour—not long
before closing time. He usually dictated his letters
in the morning. But she carried her notebook and
pencil when she answered the summons.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>“No letters, Miss Clayton,” Barton said, smiling
and wheeling sideways in his chair to face her. “Sit
down. This is a business conference——”</p>
<p>“Oh! Mr. Mayberry——”</p>
<p>“I’ve talked to Jim,” said Barton quickly. “I’ve
been hammering things into him this fortnight, off
and on. He has finally got to the point where he
admits he may be able to swing things here for a bit
while I run away.”</p>
<p>Ethel flashed him a glance that he could not help
but note. He raised an admonishing hand.</p>
<p>“Don’t think I am running away from duty, Miss
Clayton. I believe we are in such shape now—the
Hapwood-Diller Company, I mean—that the business
will run smoothly under the guidance of Mr.
Mayberry—and you. I am banking a good deal on
you, Miss Clayton,” his kindly smile again lighting
up his face.</p>
<p>“On me, Mr. Barton?” she hesitated.</p>
<p>“You are such a perfectly capable person, Miss
Clayton,” he said. “I believe you have a better
grasp on details here than almost anybody else. Of
course, Mr. Mayberry and I ought to know fully
as much as you do; but the other day you proved
that we did not,” and he laughed. “That Bogata
matter, you remember. We had overlooked the
very point which we should have remembered. You
did not overlook it. Therefore——You see?</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>“That is exactly what I mean. Jim is all right.
He has a grasp of the mechanical part of the business.
But you must run the office end, more or
less——”</p>
<p>“But, Mr. Barton! you are not going to remain
away for long, are you?” she interposed.</p>
<p>“I cannot say, Miss Clayton,” he returned gravely.
“We none of us know what this war may amount to.
I only know that I can be of some help if the war
continues; and with my experience in the Guard I
should be preparing to give my country all the help
in my power if I am called on. I am leaving for the
training camp at Lake Quehasset this evening.”</p>
<p>She could not suppress a murmur, and the pallor
of her cheek was marked, but he noticed neither.</p>
<p>“The exemption board allowed my claim of business
need. But I am promised to the service if the
business here can get along without me. The time
has now come to try it,” and he laughed a little
whimsically. “You know, a dead man is seldom
missed, no matter how important his place in life
seems to be. After a little somebody is found to
fill his shoes. I fancy it will not be so hard, Miss
Clayton, to fill mine.</p>
<p>“I am depending on Mr. Mayberry and you, Miss
Clayton, to keep the stockholders of the company
satisfied that I can be spared. We have some months’
training in camp in any case. I have felt the call
from ‘over there’ for a long time. I own frankly,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>
he added, his voice vibrant with emotion, “that had
I been free, I should not have waited for our Government
to declare war before getting into the scrimmage.</p>
<p>“But never mind that! I was held here. You
know something of the circumstances we faced two
years ago when I took hold. Now we seem to have
got out of the mire. We’re standing on firm ground.
With ordinary care everything should go smoothly
with the Hapwood-Diller Company. Can I depend
on you to do your part, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, Mr. Barton! I will! I will!” cried the girl
with clasped hands, but looking away from him.</p>
<p>“Fine! Help Mr. Mayberry all you can. He’s rather
brusk, perhaps, but he knows the business. Still——</p>
<p>“I’ve one favor to ask of you, Miss Clayton. It is
important, and it is particular. I want you to write
to me.”</p>
<p>She looked at him then. But there was nothing
in his serious face to warrant the slight flush that
came into her cheeks.</p>
<p>“I’d like to have you write me about once a week.
Consult nobody as to what you write, but just detail
as briefly as you please matters as they occur—business
matters and whatever you may think will give
me a correct impression of the situation of affairs
in the factory and the office.</p>
<p>“I haven’t the least idea,” he added, once again
smiling, “that things will not run along all right.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
But I shall be anxious—nervous, if you will. Mayberry
will write, of course. But you will look on
things with quite different eyes from the way he will
look at them. In the first place, you are a woman
and you have a different mental slant upon every
occurrence from that of a man, it seems to me. I
am sure anything you may have to report will be
illuminating.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Mr. Barton.”</p>
<p>“Will you do it, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>“Am I to understand I am to render a weekly report
and keep the matter secret from everybody—even
from Mr. Mayberry?”</p>
<p>“I am exacting no spy-duty from you!” he said
hastily. “That is not my meaning.”</p>
<p>“I understand you perfectly, I think,” Ethel said
gently. “You undoubtedly will be anxious.”</p>
<p>“But I want the truth—the exact truth, Miss
Clayton,” Barton went on.</p>
<p>“Yes, I understand that too,” she replied.</p>
<p>They arose at the same moment and Frank Barton
put out his hand. “You will be of great help to me,
I am sure, Miss Clayton,” he said, her hand lost for
a moment in the embrace of his larger palm. “You
have been of sure and practical assistance to me on
many occasions. I know you will be of equal aid
to Mayberry. Now, good-bye, Miss Clayton. I
hope I shall not add much to your burdens.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>“Oh, Mr. Barton! I am glad to do anything within
reason. I feel that it is but a small thing I do compared
with what you must face.”</p>
<p>At that he flushed suddenly, and like a boy. “Oh
that!” he murmured. “My duty has held me here.
Now duty calls me elsewhere. Duty is our master,
Miss Clayton. Good-bye.”</p>
<p>“And—I hope you—will return to us safely,” she
said, her eyes filling with tears.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Miss Clayton. I hope to come back
all right. I believe I shall,” he said cheerfully, and
sat down immediately to sort some papers upon his
desk. He did not look again in her direction as she
went out of the private office.</p>
<p>He heard the raucous note of an automobile horn
a little later. He stacked the documents together
and stuck them in their proper pigeonhole. He was
leaving his desk open for Jim Mayberry to use if he
wished.</p>
<p>Stepping quickly to the window Barton saw the
Fuller car stopping at the curb. Helen was driving,
and was alone. He took down his hat and dust-coat
and passed rapidly through the office. But at the
outer door he stopped a moment and looked back.
He faced the entire office force from that position.</p>
<p>“Be good children till I return—all of you,” he
said, laughing. “I am banking heavy on you, Sydney.
Good-bye, all. I want to hear good reports
of you while I am away.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>Mayberry was to meet him later and go to the train
with him. But Helen Fuller had come to take him
for a spin and for a little talk on this, his last day in
town. Somehow, he had not been invited to dinner
as she suggested. Was it because Grandon Fuller
after all considered the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company of less importance to his
schemes, now that he was going away?</p>
<p>“Dear <i>me</i>, Mr. Barton,” sighed Helen, dexterously
turning the car, “my conscience <i>condemns</i> me.”</p>
<p>“Why so?”</p>
<p>“I fear something I may have said is sending you
off like this—so <i>suddenly</i>—and to train for the army.
Dear me! suppose you should be killed or wounded?”</p>
<p>“Scarcely likely in the training camp,” he returned,
happy in the concern the girl seemed to show.</p>
<p>“Oh, but <i>afterward</i>! For I know you will go over
there, Mr. Barton. I feel it! And if anything <i>I</i>
have said——”</p>
<p>“I am sure,” he told her quietly, “that you have
said nothing to me or to any of your gentlemen
acquaintances regarding our duty in this trying time
that was not perfectly justified, Miss Fuller.”</p>
<p>“Oh, do you <i>think</i> so?” she cried. “Do you <i>know</i>,
Mr. Barton, I am greatly tempted to go to France
<i>myself</i>. Some girls I know have already gone. You
know, really, it puts one on the <i>qui vive</i> to hear so
much about it—and—and all that,” she added rather
vaguely.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>He was so much in earnest himself, he felt so
strongly the exaltation of his decision, that he did
not notice the futility of her speech. And then Helen
Fuller was strikingly, if a little flamboyantly, pretty.
He nodded with pursed lips.</p>
<p>“It’s a job we all have to decide for ourselves. I
can imagine how you feel, Miss Fuller. As for myself,
I’ve got to be in it!”</p>
<p>“It’s too bad,” she drawled, “that you couldn’t
influence Morry Copley to go with you.”</p>
<p>“Well, Mr. Copley now will have to decide for
himself, won’t he?”</p>
<p>She laughed. “It seems he has allowed Mrs. Copley
to decide for him,” she said.</p>
<p>Somehow their conversation did not take that personal
tinge which Helen desired. To tell the truth,
a girl cannot give her escort just the right feeling of
intimacy when both her eyes and her hands are engaged
in guiding a motor-car. Helen finally dropped
Barton at his lodgings in time for dinner, and their
good-bye was much more casual than she had intended
it should be.</p>
<p>“But I shall go over to the camp to see you,” she
promised, as she wheeled away from the curb. “Best
of luck!”</p>
<p>The man stood bareheaded till the girl had turned
the corner. But that night when he closed his
eyes, in his Pullman berth, it was the face of another
girl, with brown eyes tear-filled, that rose to his
vision and dissolved only when he sank to sleep.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII<br>
<small>LEADING UP TO A CLIMAX</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">For</span> Ethel Clayton the days that immediately followed
the departure of the manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company were merely busy days. Positively
nothing happened. The particular work that came
to her was not different from that which had been
her portion for some months; only in her oversight
of things in general (and that oversight secretive) was
she differently engaged.</p>
<p>She took her book and pencil into the private office
each morning at the usual hour and took dictation
from Jim Mayberry.</p>
<p>Mayberry was not the clear-headed, forceful
thinker that Barton was. But his letters were brief
and to the point nevertheless; he was not a numbskull.
Nor did he lack a grasp of business details
quite necessary to the carrying on of the affairs of
the big concern. He worked faithfully, seemed to
neglect nothing; and though he did not admit it,
Ethel felt sure he was thankful to her when she
smoothed the crudeness of his English, or brought
out more clearly the points he desired to make in
his correspondence.</p>
<p>To her satisfaction he did not at first show those
amorous proclivities which had so annoyed her in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
the past. His thoughts seemed to be centered on
the business of trying to fill both Barton’s and his
own jobs. Or was it that Jim Mayberry had something
on his mind other than the business affairs of
the Hapwood-Diller Company to trouble him?</p>
<p>The office force, of course, buzzed at first because
of the departure of Mr. Barton. But every individual
was on his best behavior. They had all liked
the general manager; and, perhaps, they had visions
of his returning suddenly and taking them to task
for sins of both omission and commission.</p>
<p>Mayberry left the people in the outer office strictly
and entirely alone; even Sydney came to Ethel at
times for advice, or to report some slight matter
which needed to be “put up to the boss.” It had
been so before Barton went away, although the girl
had not then remarked it. She was still “the buffer”
between the small annoyances of the office and the
man at the head of affairs.</p>
<p>Grandon Fuller came in one day and had a somewhat
extended conference with the manager <i>pro tem</i>.
Ethel noted that the holder of so large a block of the
company’s stock seemed to be very friendly with
Mayberry, whereas when Mr. Macon Hammerly
came in, as was his wont, he always timed his calls
so as to miss Mayberry. The shrewd old grain dealer
was frank to say that he did not like the present head
of the Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>“Jim always looked to me like a well-fed fox,”
grumbled Hammerly to Ethel. “I always wonder
who’s pullet he’s just swallowed.”</p>
<p>Although Mayberry did not greatly disturb Ethel’s
quiet pool of existence, Benway Chase seemed to have
been an agitating pebble flung into it. Her old
friend took hold of his duties with all the energy
and keenness of perception that she knew he would
display, once he was given a chance. Sydney and
the rest of the office force liked him immensely.</p>
<p>On her own part, however, Ethel found him trying.
He was promptly at her gate every morning
to accompany her to work; and at night he escorted
her home. It had been like that when they went
to school together. But Ethel felt altogether different
about it now. She did not like to be made conspicuous
or to be appropriated in such a fashion.
And when Benway undertook to go to lunch with
her, she put her foot down firmly.</p>
<p>Yet, she could not hurt his feelings. Because of
his affliction she had been all her life striving to be
particularly kind to Benway. From her earliest
remembrance, when she had felt spasms of pity and
sympathy for her little playmate and had impulsively
run to him to pat his cheek and say, “Poor, poor
Bennie!” to this very chance she had begged for him
with the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company,
Ethel Clayton had mothered the boy. Naturally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>
and quite unconsciously he took advantage of her
kindness.</p>
<p>She shrank from having the rest of the office force
suspect any tender relation between herself and the
boy. “Boy” was of course the term in which she
thought of him. And when he undertook to time his
absence from the office so as to accompany her to the
restaurant which she usually patronized, she had to
put a stop to that. She quietly inaugurated a system
of “taking turn about” for lunch hour which pretty
well put it out of Benway’s power to leave at the
same time she did.</p>
<p>Likewise, she went farther away, to the Orleans
Tea Room, instead of to the place at which it was
the custom of most of the Hapwood-Diller office
force to have their midday meal. The tea room was
a more expensive place and was largely patronized by
“up town” folk; and it was because of this change
in her habits that Ethel chanced to learn, not two
weeks after the manager’s departure for the training
camp, something that she thought really did not
concern her, but which interested her immensely,
as it was connected with Frank Barton.</p>
<p>She saw one noon a gaily, though beautifully,
dressed and unmistakable figure entering the tea
room ahead of her—that of Helen Fuller. Her escort
was Morrison Copley—one of those men whose names
made Ethel’s lips involuntarily curl. And yet, as far<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>
as Ethel Clayton knew, there was nothing bad about
Morry Copley.</p>
<p>She considered it a misfortune that the only empty
table should be next the one occupied by those two
from what Macon Hammerly called “the swagger
part of town.” Miss Fuller looked the employee
of the Hapwood-Diller Company over with a cold
disdain which might have hurt cruelly a supersensitive
soul. Ethel’s was too well balanced a nature to be
disturbed by the ill breeding of the other girl.</p>
<p>“You boys are going to be <i>terribly</i> put to it for
styles this fall,” Helen was drawling, her elbows on
the table and her hands cupped to hold her pretty
chin. Somebody had told her that the pose became
her. “Everything offered for masculine wear will
have a military cut.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see why we’re to be put to it,” returned
Morry, gazing at the girl before him with doglike
devotion. “Belted things always did look well on
me, you know, Nell. I’m slim waisted.”</p>
<p>“Slim in every way, Morry,” the girl said laughing.
“Morrison Copley, S. S. quite fits you. Slim slacker.
My! <i>I’d</i> be ashamed if <i>I</i> were a man——”</p>
<p>“Plenty of fellows are going. Those that like
army life and—and all that,” complained Morry.
“I don’t see why you should hound me, all the time,
Nell. And mothaw really would make an awful
row if I said I wanted to go.”</p>
<p>“If you even <i>said</i> so, Morry?” she scoffed.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>“Say, aren’t you satisfied?” demanded the young
man with more energy than usual. “You say you
made Frank Barton go to camp. How many scalps
do you want to hang in your wigwam?”</p>
<p>“Your scalp, as you call it, would look pretty good
to me,” she laughed. “I want to send all the fellows
I can. Bradley’s half promised. He was in the
Guard for two years, but got out because he was too
lazy to drill, I suppose,” Miss Fuller said.</p>
<p>“Pooh, they’re only stalling,” grumbled Morry.
“You know just about how far Brad will get at that
training camp. And Barton’s only going for a show.
They’ll never get to France, any of them.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t <i>you</i> try it, then? If there’s no danger,
that should suit <i>you</i>, Morry!”</p>
<p>“I tell you what!” exclaimed the young man indignantly
and forgetting his drawl, “if I go into this
thing I’ll go the whole figure, don’t forget that! If
other fellows go to France I shall go. I won’t hunt
me a soft job here where I can wear a uniform and
never smell powder.”</p>
<p>Helen Fuller looked at him and thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“I wonder, Morry, if you really <i>would</i>,” she finally
said.</p>
<p>Ethel could not help hearing this. Indeed, the
heedlessness with which the two conversed on their
private affairs in public made it imperative that all
within earshot should know what they were talking
about.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>Slight as was Ethel’s interest in the two, and in
their affairs, one point did not escape her. It could
not fail to impress the girl’s mind and linger in her
thoughts.</p>
<p>Had Frank Barton gone to the training camp because
of the bite of Helen Fuller’s tart tongue? Miss
Fuller was taking much commendation for inspiring
the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company with
patriotism. Was Barton’s brand of patriotism of
that character? How much influence did the girl
really have over him?</p>
<p>These questions could not be stilled in Ethel’s
mind. She reverted to them time and again. Helen’s
claim that her influence drove her young men friends
to patriotic service seemed to be believed by other
people. Somebody told Ethel on Sunday at church
that Charlie Bradley and young Copley had both
gone to the officers’ camp.</p>
<p>“Of course, it’s more of a lark than anything else
for most of those who go,” said the person who told
Ethel. “Fancy Morry Copley trying to give orders
in that squeaky voice of his!”</p>
<p>Ethel’s letters to Barton were strictly business,
without being coldly formal. She allowed them to
sound a note of cool friendliness in the beginning and
at the close but nothing deeper. An expression of
hope for his good health was as warm a phrase as
entered into them. His polite, brief acknowledgments,
addressed to her home, showed that he considered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
their correspondence nothing more than a
business arrangement.</p>
<p>She realized that she was by no means the only
person in Mailsburg interested in the absent ones
in camp and barracks. The town was beginning to
wake up to the exigencies of the war. The ministers
prayed for the boys on Sunday, and every social and
charitable organization in Mailsburg began to talk
of work for the soldiers at least, whether or not any
of them really did much at first.</p>
<p>At this time in her heart Ethel hated the idea of
war so desperately that the many activities connected
with the draft and the going away and the war itself
seemed to her mind both futile and non-beneficial.
If those young men really got as far as France, and
into the trenches, they would be killed. They were
merely “cannon fodder” in that case. And if they
did not go—if the war ended, as some people said it
would, before many of them got over there—then all
this talk and planning was so much wasted breath
and time and money.</p>
<p>It was a fact that, at this particular time, Ethel
Clayton had little interest save in her work and in
the affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company—particularly
in Frank Barton’s absence from his post
and how it might affect the concern for which they
both worked.</p>
<p>Just as she felt that there were plenty of other men
to go to the war and that Barton might be spared,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>
so she felt that there were already too many women,
both foolish and wise, giving their time and thought
to war work. The local papers began to be full of
news of the various activities of the several organizations
in this connection. In addition some of those
desirous of notoriety were getting a heap of free advertising.</p>
<p>“I declare!” said Mrs. Clayton, busily clicking her
knitting needles, “the <i>Clarion</i> toots a loud note almost
every day for that girl of Mehitable Fuller’s.
She’s first into one thing and then another—like a
spoiled kitten. And all this folderol about the war
seems to give her more of a chance than ever to show
off.”</p>
<p>“I wonder,” said Ethel, thoughtfully, “if we ought
not to think more about it than we do, Mother? I
sit here with my hands idle in the evening. I wonder
if all this knitting I see going on hasn’t a basis of
honest endeavor in it, after all?”</p>
<p>“Pshaw!” said her mother.</p>
<p>“I know it looks silly. Looks like a fad. One of
the girls in the office brings her knitting bag. She’s
at the switchboard and has more or less idle time.
Instead of reading silly love stories as she used, she
knits.”</p>
<p>“What does she knit?”</p>
<p>“Why, she says she hopes it will turn out to be a
sweater when she gets it done; and if it is good enough<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>
she will give it to the Red Cross,” and Ethel laughed
gently.</p>
<p>“Humph!” mumbled Mrs. Clayton. “I wonder if
she has a good pattern?”</p>
<p>Thus grew the stirrings of general interest in Mailsburg
in the war and in our preparations for entering
it. Ethel realized amid her manifold office duties
that the undercurrent of their life was becoming more
strongly patriotic.</p>
<p>It was learned that at least one Mailsburg boy was
already at the front. It was true he had disappeared
from town some years before, and under a cloud; but
his mother had always known where he was.</p>
<p>Now the <i>Clarion</i> came out with a full page on Sunday,
“Mailsburg’s First Boy in France.” Sergeant
Willy O’Rourke of General Pershing’s forces had sent
his mother several postal cards from “over there.”
Here they were reproduced, with a tintype of the
sergeant and a sympathetic wash-drawing of Mrs.
O’Rourke—a little old woman living down by the
docks who said to the reporter:</p>
<p>“Shure an’ th’ O’Rourkes was all fighters. ’Tis no
wonder Willy got over there first. Them Garmans’ll
have their own troubles now.”</p>
<p>And yet there was something in it that made the
reader choke up. Macon Hammerly had his brusk
comment to make:</p>
<p>“It may be that Bill O’Rourke left town just ahead
of the constable. I remember well the red-headed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
gossoon. He wasn’t a mite better than this Boots
Skinner is now. But, by the holy poker! he’s a <i>man</i>.
There’s nothing soft and sissified about Bill. If
Bill dies for his country he’ll be doing something better
than a whole lot of these trifling, dawdling fellows
will ever arrive at.”</p>
<p>If he dies for his country! That might be Frank
Barton’s fate if he went “over there.” The thought
more than once brought Ethel Clayton upright in
bed at night. It sometimes wet her pillow with tears.
Yet, if it was the truth that Helen Fuller’s influence
had urged Barton away to the wars, Ethel was jealous
of the other girl for it, and she realized the fact with
shame.</p>
<p>Affairs in the Hapwood-Diller Company offices
continued much as usual for several weeks. The
directors seemed to think Jim Mayberry a satisfactory
substitute manager. Having the details of the business
at her finger tips as she had, Ethel was quite
sure that the superintendent was attending to his
additional duties in an exemplary manner.</p>
<p>Ethel checked up much of the work of the other
members of the office staff, especially in the correspondence
end of the business, and it was in looking
over a schedule of stock to be ordered she made a
discovery that puzzled her.</p>
<p>Mayberry had now, of course, the ordering of supplies
of all kinds; but there was little in the manufacturing
line that Ethel Clayton did not know about.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>
Here were certain grades of stock which she had no
idea were called for by any order then on the factory’s
books already contracted for.</p>
<p>Had Mr. Barton been doing the ordering she would
have felt quite free to hold up the schedule until she
could speak to him about it. But she feared Mayberry
might be touchy in any such matter. He was
jealous of his rights, and she hesitated to give him a
chance to say she was overstepping the borders of
her field of employment.</p>
<p>She went to the files and spent some time in checking
off the grades of supplies called for by the orders
the factory already had contracted for. And suddenly—it
was quite a startling discovery—she came upon
the schedule of the Bogata Company’s order which
she had every reason to believe had been declined.</p>
<p>She had a clear remembrance of the letter she had
written, Mr. Barton’s approval of it, even the reason
for the order being refused by the Hapwood-Diller
Manufacturing Company. This reason was connected
with the very purchase of these special supplies
she had noted in the puzzling schedule in her hand.</p>
<p>It could not be overlooked. There was something
wrong in what she had discovered.</p>
<p>Fearing she knew not what—a mistake on her own
part, perhaps—she waited until she could find Mayberry
disengaged. When she knew he was in the
manager’s office and alone, Ethel ventured to knock
upon the door.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VIII<br>
<small>A PUZZLING SITUATION</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Mayberry</span> glanced up swiftly as she entered the
office at his response. He was rolling a cigarette
which he finished and lighted, vouchsafing her
merely a casual nod. Very different treatment, this,
from Frank Barton’s unfailing courtesy.</p>
<p>“What’s on the docket, Ethel?” Mayberry asked,
eyeing her through the smoke that circled from his
lips. “Anything wrong?”</p>
<p>“I am not at all sure that there is anything wrong,
Mr. Mayberry,” she replied, ignoring the chair he
twisted about for her to occupy, and standing at
the end of the desk. “I have found something which
puzzles me so much that I thought it best to have you
ratify the order before it is sent.”</p>
<p>“What order?”</p>
<p>She placed before him the schedule for supplies
which he had given to one of the other girls to copy.
“These are the items that puzzle me,” she said, pointing
to several which, in summing up, amounted to
several thousand dollars.</p>
<p>“Well?” he said, his gaze direct and not at all reassuring.</p>
<p>But Ethel Clayton was not to be easily put down.
“I was not aware,” she said quietly, “that any of our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>
contracts now under way called for goods of that
grade.”</p>
<p>“Well?” he said again and in the same sneering
tone.</p>
<p>“So I investigated,” Ethel pursued, apparently
unshaken, “and I found this.” She placed before
him the papers relating to the Bogata order which
she felt so sure Mr. Barton had refused to consider.</p>
<p>“Huh? Why shouldn’t you find it?” Mayberry
asked in apparent surprise. Yet he flushed slightly,
too.</p>
<p>“I have every reason to suppose that order refused.
You know it, too. You remember that Mr. Barton
asked me to write a letter to that end. I did so.”</p>
<p>“I remember there was something said about it,”
Mayberry reflected. “But I heard nothing more
about it. Frank said nothing further to me.”</p>
<p>“No. Because it was settled, Mr. Mayberry,” the
girl said more confidently. “We cannot fill this
order.”</p>
<p>“Indeed? Are you sure about that?” he asked,
eyeing her with perfect composure now.</p>
<p>“Why shouldn’t I be sure?” she retorted.</p>
<p>“Well—I don’t know,” he drawled. “If you wrote
a letter refusing this order, Frank saw it, of course?”</p>
<p>“He O.K.’d it,” she said.</p>
<p>“And it was sent?”</p>
<p>“So I presume.”</p>
<p>“It looks to me as though Frank must have changed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>
his mind,” the superintendent said with a sly little
smile. “He said nothing more to me about it. He
would, it seems to me, if the order was finally refused.
Having once discussed the matter with me, seems
to me he would have done that.”</p>
<p>“But he thought you understood,” cried the girl,
both puzzled and alarmed. “You know he said the
Bogata Company’s credit was involved. It was not
whether the order should be accepted or not that
was under discussion, Mr. Mayberry. It was merely
how the refusal should be couched—in what terms.
Don’t you remember?”</p>
<p>“I admit you seem to have a clearer remembrance
of the circumstances than I,” said Mayberry. “But
it looks to me as though Frank had changed his mind
about it without referring to the matter again to
either of us. He probably found out that his fears
regarding the Bogata Company’s credit were unfounded.
Otherwise how would I have found the
order on file? We have got to get right to work on
it, too. That is why I am ordering these particular
supplies.”</p>
<p>“But, Mr. Mayberry!” she gasped, “I am quite
sure a mistake has been made. Mr. Barton never
intended this order to be filled.”</p>
<p>“How do you know?”</p>
<p>“The letter I wrote——”</p>
<p>“Pooh! I suppose Frank was trying you out—seeing
what you could do in an emergency,” and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>
superintendent laughed. “He never sent your letter.
The Bogata people are old customers. It would not
do to offend them.”</p>
<p>“That is just it, Mr. Mayberry,” she cried. “It
was a serious matter. I feel sure—Why! I put the
letter in the mail myself.”</p>
<p>Mayberry sat up straighter in his chair and his
gaze became more intent. He dropped the butt of
his cigarette in the ash tray that was never on the
desk when the general manager was there.</p>
<p>“You mean to tell me,” he asked, “that you posted
that letter after Barton signed it?”</p>
<p>“No. It was after John made his last trip to the
post-office. When Mr. Barton had signed the letter
I sealed it in the envelope, affixed the stamp, and
placed it in the letter basket on my desk with other
late mail.”</p>
<p>“Humph! Did those letters go out that evening?”
Mayberry asked.</p>
<p>“No. John always takes them when he goes to
early post—before I arrive at my desk.”</p>
<p>“Then Frank could have regained the letter without
your knowing it.”</p>
<p>“But, Mr. Mayberry! surely he would have said
something.”</p>
<p>“Are you sure? He was not in the habit of taking
you—or even me—into his confidence in most matters,
was he?” and Mayberry looked at the girl keenly.
“Where’s the carbon copy of that letter?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>“I’ll get it,” she said, turning swiftly to the door.</p>
<p>“And I say, Ethel!” he said. “Bring the Bogata
Company’s letter as well, will you?”</p>
<p>She resented his familiar way of speaking; but
never had she been able to break Jim Mayberry of
calling her by her given name. And he had, after
all, known her when she was still a child. She was
gone some minutes from the private office—long
enough for Mayberry to smoke a second cigarette.
She appeared with the proper drawer of the file cabinet
and her countenance had fallen. She had run
hastily through the Bogata correspondence. Here
was the letter which had accompanied the order
from the Bogata Company. The copy of the answer
she had written at Frank Barton’s behest, and which
he had approved, was not to be found.</p>
<p>“I do not understand it, Mr. Mayberry,” the girl
declared in a worried tone.</p>
<p>“Pshaw! easily enough understood,” the superintendent
rejoined. “He probably conferred with somebody
who knew the Bogata people are as safe as a
stone church. So he withdrew the letter from your
mail basket after you went home.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Mayberry!”</p>
<p>“Sure.” Mayberry laughed. “You’ve stirred up
a mare’s nest. Don’t worry.”</p>
<p>“But I can’t accept your assertion as at all plausible,”
the girl said earnestly. “He surely would
have spoken to me about it. The next day——”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>“His mind was full of army stuff. He did not know
half the time what he was doing here for a week before
he went.”</p>
<p>Ethel knew that was not at all true. But she was
not here to quarrel with the superintendent. However,
she said:</p>
<p>“I remember clearly that Mr. Barton did not remain
here later than I did that evening, Mr. Mayberry.
I saw him on the street after I left the factory
by the side gate.”</p>
<p>“Huh!” Mayberry’s cheeks suddenly burned again
and his eyes glittered as he gazed loweringly upon
her. “You seem to remember mighty well what happened.
I remember that evening, too, come to think
of it. I was waiting out in front for you in my car.
You stood me up.”</p>
<p>Scorn leaped suddenly into the girl’s eyes. “I do
not understand you, Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly.</p>
<p>“Oh! you don’t, hey?”</p>
<p>“We are not discussing personalities,” she said,
dropping her gaze and ignoring his ugly look. “This
is business. I fear there has been a serious mistake
made.”</p>
<p>“Nothing of the kind, that <i>I</i> can see,” Mayberry
rejoined. “Barton changed his mind. Why should
you bother <i>your</i> head about it further?”</p>
<p>His sneer bit like acid in a fresh wound; but Ethel
checked her temper.</p>
<p>“I do not mean to interfere in the slightest with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
your work, Mr. Mayberry. Mr. Barton brought me
into the affair himself. I feel that all is not right.
Let us communicate with Mr. Barton before this
order for stock is sent. It may save the Hapwood-Diller
Company several thousand dollars.”</p>
<p>“It won’t save us a cent.”</p>
<p>“But—”</p>
<p>“I’ve got it all figured out. You see, I’ve had this
on my mind a long time.”</p>
<p>“Yes, that may be true, still—”</p>
<p>“It won’t save us a cent, Ethel,” the superintendent
drawled again, having recovered his own temper.
“This Bogata order’s got to be filled. It will do no
good to delay the purchase of supplies. It’s Friday
now. If we wrote to-night we could not expect an
answer before Tuesday or Wednesday from Barton.
And I can point out to you why even he cannot change
matters now.”</p>
<p>“Why?” she demanded sharply.</p>
<p>He picked up the letter which had accompanied
the schedule of the order from the Bogata Company
of Norville. If he smiled Ethel did not see it, for she
was eagerly scanning the paragraph to which Mayberry’s
finger pointed:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>“Prices and terms as agreed upon in our last two
orders. If we hear nothing to the contrary within
ten days shall consider the order and terms accepted
and will look for delivery of first quota of goods within
ninety days.”</p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>“Actually,” drawled Mayberry, “this order was
accepted by us more than a month ago. It was evident
that Barton did not send the letter you wrote,
and removed the copy of it from the file. The schedule
came to me in the usual way. There is nothing
more to be said about it, Ethel. I believe that Frank
himself said something about The Hapwood-Diller
Company never reneging on a job. It would be a
bad precedent to do so when he is absent from his
post.”</p>
<p>He said it so that the girl actually winced. To
think of Jim Mayberry pointing out to her the ethics
of the matter!</p>
<p>“The fact is,” he pursued, coolly, “I have got to
get a hustle on to make the first delivery within the
specified time. I have already arranged to increase
the output of Shop Number Two in order to do this.
We shall run four or five hours overtime five days a
week, beginning Monday. We’re crowded with work
as it is; and this Bogata order is a big one.”</p>
<p>Ethel listened to him in silence. She realized that
it was useless to say anything more. Her heart
pounded in her ears, but her countenance remained
pale. She felt the approach of disaster when she
turned away from his desk with the letter file-drawer
in her arms.</p>
<p>“Don’t trouble your head about it, Ethel,” he
called after her. “You take everything too blamed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>
seriously—just as I told you before. It won’t get
you anywhere——”</p>
<p>But she had closed the door between them. Had
she turned to answer she realized very clearly that
she would have said something for which she might
be sorry afterward.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IX<br>
<small>THE DUTY DEVOLVES</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Ethel Clayton</span> felt the assurance of wrongdoing
on the part of the superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. Yet she could not tell why nor
how.</p>
<p>That the concern had been drawn into the Bogata
affair by some trick was without question. Mayberry’s
look and words alone would have proved that
to her satisfaction.</p>
<p>She had a clear and particular remembrance of
the circumstances surrounding the receipt of the
order from the Norville company, Barton’s decision
to refuse to fill it, his reason for so doing, and all.
The way in which she had shown the general manager
how to refuse the order without giving offence could
not easily be forgotten.</p>
<p>Mr. Barton had said that the running of the factory
on double time, or crowding the shops with extra
workmen, meant a distinct loss of profit rather than
a gain for the Hapwood-Diller Company. The factory
was not arranged for such increase of output.
More than one concern has been ruined by such false
prosperity.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>Here Mayberry was planning to put into execution
exactly the plan vetoed by the absent general manager’s
good sense. Yet, knowing how the contracts
for their product stood, Ethel believed that such increase
in working hours would be necessary if the
Bogata order was to be filled on time.</p>
<p>There was a catch there. She felt it. She was
convinced that the superintendent had more knowledge
of the subject than he was willing to admit.</p>
<p>It all puzzled the girl. Why should Jim Mayberry
be so determined to balk Mr. Barton’s will? And
in this particular instance?</p>
<p>As far as she had been able to see the superintendent
had done nothing in his conduct of the factory’s
affairs which would have either displeased Barton or
was contrary to the latter’s methods. Why was the
superintendent so determined to favor the Bogata
Company?</p>
<p>She remembered clearly that the general manager
of the Hapwood-Diller Company was positive of the
irresponsibility of the Bogata people. There was no
gainsaying that. She was positive he had not changed
his mind, involving the destruction of the letter she
had written and Barton had signed, the removal of
the carbon copy from the files, and the filing of the
schedule of the Bogata Company’s order.</p>
<p>No! she would not believe Frank Barton had done
all that and said nothing about it to either Mayberry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>
or herself. Yet, if the manager had not done it,
<i>who had</i>?</p>
<p>Who would be benefited by such a favor to the
Bogata people? It might be actually disastrous to
the Hapwood-Diller Company—and that thought
frightened Ethel.</p>
<p>She did not know what to do. That is, what to
do to halt the line of conduct Mayberry had plainly
determined to follow. She figured up the schedule
for factory stock again. Between four and five thousand
dollars for special grade raw material, useless
except to the Bogata people, was included in it.</p>
<p>Knowing well how carefully Barton had watched
the outlay for stock for months—how narrow the
line was between profit and loss in every department
indeed—Ethel quite realized that this single purchase
would make a very bad showing upon the books of
the Hapwood-Diller Company, unless the Bogata
order was finished and was paid for.</p>
<p>If that contract was filled and was not paid for, a
ruinous deficit in supplies and labor cost would face
the factory at the end of the fiscal year. And in
addition the general manager had assured her he
figured overtime work or an increase of help in the
shops as positively detrimental.</p>
<p>This order for stock and factory supplies was supposed
to go out at once. It was nearly time for John
Murphy to make his last trip for the day to the post-office.
There was absolutely nothing to hold the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
order back, and Mayberry, she knew, would take
offence if the matter was retarded.</p>
<p>It was true that five days must be wasted if Mr.
Barton was communicated with by mail. And that
joker in the Bogata Company’s letter seemed to be a
barrier to any attempt to get out of fulfilling the
contract at this late day. Would it do any good to
disturb Barton about the matter at all now?</p>
<p>If she could only see him! If she could discuss the
point with him—tell him of her suspicions and fears.
At least, some of her suspicions. Ethel scarcely admitted
to herself that she positively identified the
person guilty of juggling the letters and the Bogata
order sheets. Merely she felt certain that Frank
Barton knew nothing about it.</p>
<p>He should know. He must know before more
harm was done.</p>
<p>The order for supplies was before her. She reached
across the desk for the envelope in which to enclose
it and her stiff linen cuff caught in the filigree work
of the inkstand the office staff had presented to her.</p>
<p>It tottered. In another moment the catastrophe
had occurred—a deluge of blue fluid rolled across the
desk and the papers on it.</p>
<p>Ethel sprang up to escape the drip from the top
of the desk.</p>
<p>“Man overboard!” ejaculated Benway Chase,
starting for the lavatory for a towel with which to
mop up the ink.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>Little Skinner held the blotted order sheets gingerly
by their corners, to drip over Ethel’s wastebasket.</p>
<p>“Gee!” she said, hoarsely, “all them papers!”</p>
<p>“Those papers, Mabel,” admonished Ethel involuntarily.</p>
<p>For Mabel Skinner was like an actor afflicted with
stammering in his natural character; when once in
his part and on the stage he never stutters. So
Mabel, nimble of wit, who was studying stenography
at a night school, hoping to work up to a better position
with the Hapwood-Diller Company, could take
the small amount of dictation that fell to her reasonably
well and could transcribe it into fair English:
but she usually talked like a street gamin.</p>
<p>“They will have to be recopied, Mabel,” Ethel
said quietly. “Josephine has her hands full; will you
do it for me?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” agreed Miss Skinner, shifting her gum.
Then she cocked an apprehensive eye at the clock.
“I—I got a date to-night, Miss Clayton; but I can
go without supper——”</p>
<p>“I don’t wish you to finish it to-night, Mabel. Let
me have it completed sometime to-morrow forenoon.”</p>
<p>“I’m on,” said the girl, and bore away the streaked
and blotted papers to her machine.</p>
<p>John was called in to clean up the muss, and after
a while Ethel could resume her seat. Nothing of
importance upon her desk had been spoiled by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
ink but the supply order sheets, and fortunately
Jim Mayberry did not come out of the private office
until it was all over. It was Ethel’s business to see
that the order was promptly sent. It was her fault
that it was delayed.</p>
<p>Never before in her business experience had Ethel
Clayton deliberately done such a thing. She was
acting upon her own initiative and in a way that
scarcely measured up to her ethical standards. Yet
how should she meet guile save with guile?</p>
<p>On the way home that evening Benway was bewailing
the fact that Mr. Barton was not in the office
so that he could see how well he, Benway, was fitting
into the routine of the office.</p>
<p>“Even Mr. Mayberry admits I can do the work all
right,” the boy said hopefully. “He said as much
yesterday. But I don’t like the fellow, Ethel. I
don’t like the way he looks at you.”</p>
<p>“‘A cat may look at a king’, Bennie,” she said
lightly.</p>
<p>“But no dog like him should look at a queen,
Ethel,” Benway Chase retorted with a smile and
a little sigh. “They are all tarred with the same
brush, Ethel. Every man that comes into the offices
wants to hang over your desk and palaver.”</p>
<p>“Hush, Ben! How you talk!” she exclaimed, a little
flushed and annoyed. “I declare I’ll have you sent
out into the shipping room to work if you watch me
like that.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>“Pooh!” he laughed. “Is the honey at fault because
the bees buzz around it?”</p>
<p>“How poetical!” she scoffed. Yet she was secretly
displeased. She did not like to think that the men
she met in business hours gave her more attention
than matters relating to business called for. The
one man whose admiration she would have been
glad to secure had never, while he was with them,
shown any particular interest in her.</p>
<p>Ethel was too introspective for her own comfort.</p>
<p>She wondered all the evening if the thought that
was budding in her mind was germinated by her desire
to see Frank Barton. Was it for business reasons
that she determined on her course? Or did she have
another and more personal desire to speak with the
general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company,
face to face?</p>
<p>However, she considered that the duty had devolved
upon her to take a drastic course. The order
for new stock for the factory could be delayed only
forty-eight hours through the accident to the first
draft of the schedule. Instead of its reaching its
destination on Saturday, Ethel saw to it that it was
not mailed until after noon on Saturday. Therefore
it would not be received by the dealer to whom it was
assigned until Monday. Meantime——</p>
<p>She astonished her mother on Saturday evening by
announcing that she proposed to go to Quehasset on
the early train Sunday morning. By this time the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>
railroad was running excursion trains to the officers’
training camp on Saturdays and Sundays. Quehasset
was becoming a popular week-end resort.</p>
<p>“Not alone!” gasped Mrs. Clayton. “Never!”</p>
<p>“I’d like to know why not?” her daughter asked,
rather tartly. “I’ve been to Boston alone, and that’s
farther.”</p>
<p>“But it won’t look right—all those men, Ethel.
You know some of them, too. There’s Mr. Barton!”</p>
<p>“I expect to see him,” declared the girl composedly.</p>
<p>“It—it doesn’t look right,” objected her mother
more faintly.</p>
<p>“I’d like to know why not? I should hope I was
old enough to go about without a chaperon, or——”</p>
<p>“Let Benway go with you,” urged Mrs. Clayton,
hurriedly.</p>
<p>But that was exactly what Ethel did not wish to do.
Indeed, if possible, she should have liked to keep the
knowledge of her trip to Quehasset from her mother.
She hurried away early in the morning, before most
of the folk at that end of Burnaby Street were astir,
and boarded the train which stopped but a minute
at the Mailsburg Station at eight o’clock.</p>
<p>She noted, as she passed along the High Street to
the station, that more than the usual number of automobiles
were abroad and most of them headed for
the Creek Road which was the first lap of the driving
highway to the training camp.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>The Fuller car was one of these she saw. Helen
was driving and her mother and father sat in the
tonneau. Her cousins gave Ethel Clayton not the
slightest notice, but she could not help being somewhat
disturbed by the thought that they were likewise
bound for the training camp and that they
would see her there with Frank Barton. At any rate,
she hoped to arrive at the army camp first.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER X<br>
<small>LOVE AND BUSINESS</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Frank Barton</span> had been thinking but little of love
and not much about business. His entire time from
the bugle-blown:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="first">“I can’t get ’em up!</div>
<div class="verse">I can’t get ’em up!</div>
<div class="verse">I can’t get ’em up in the mor-r-rning!”</div>
</div></div>
<p>to tattoo at night was filled with thoughts military.
In addition to the regular course in tactics, he was
studying special branches, such as the science of gunfire,
range finding, signaling, and the like, for he wished
to be assigned to the Field Artillery branch of the
service.</p>
<p>His former experience in the Guard was of vast
assistance to him, yet he found that even the brief
campaign on the Mexican Border had greatly changed
the drill and the training of both officers and men.
New methods were being adopted all the time. He
soon realized that a military formula based upon the
experience gained by our War Department in the
Civil War, and upon which basis the National Guard
had been drilled in the past, was almost as old-fashioned
as the rules for conducting a Field of Honor
in the time of the Crusaders.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>The Great War has flung into the discard most
established measures of warfare. Fancy, so many
years after the tilting with spears, a fighting man
wearing an iron pot on his head!</p>
<p>Barton had little time for the social life of the
camp nor interest in it. He was only interested in
those men about him who were as sturdily in earnest
as himself in learning and getting ahead. Some
were getting into “this army thing,” as they called it,
as a profession; some out of pure patriotism, even if
they did not talk about it. In either case those who
were not thoroughly in earnest did not last long.</p>
<p>He was mildly surprised when Morry Copley and
his friend Bradley arrived in camp—the former arrayed
in a uniform cut by a fashionable tailor, Bradley
slouching behind in his heavy way, and with a
scowl. Why either of these fellows had come it was
hard for Barton to understand.</p>
<p>Reports from the factory encouraged Barton to
believe that he might safely continue his training.
Mayberry had driven over in his car once to see him
and they had talked things over. Business seemed
running on well-oiled gears. There had been nothing
in Ethel Clayton’s brief letters to make him apprehensive.
The factory and its affairs seemed far afield
from him.</p>
<p>The camp interests were so manifold that when
even a short furlough was due him Barton did not go
home to Mailsburg. Instead he went to New York<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>
to confer with certain high officers of the Department
of the East who he felt sure would bear him in
mind if chance arose for an early assignment to the
Front. If business matters remained as they seemed
to be, he was determined to get “over there” as soon
as possible. Pershing’s hundred thousand were on
the scene; the engineers had marched through London
and had arrived in France; now it was the Rainbow
Division that was talked of as being almost
ready to sail, and Frank Barton was eager to be
assigned to duty with them.</p>
<p>“Rest your mind easy, Barton,” Grandon Fuller
assured him the first time he came over to Camp
Quehasset with his daughter. “We stockholders
appreciate all that you have done; the Board is more
than pleased with your work. But you have trained
a good assistant in Mayberry. He’ll do very well.”</p>
<p>“I believe he will,” Frank Barton said heartily.
He would rather, however, have had a reassuring
word from Macon Hammerly upon this point. But
Hammerly neither wrote to him nor came near the
camp.</p>
<p>Helen was full of her own plans, although she did
not forget to show some interest in Barton’s affairs.
She had become an active member of the Red Cross
forces. Being amply able to pay her own expenses,
and with health and freedom, she had the more easily
secured permission to join the very next quota of
Red Cross workers sailing from “an Atlantic seaport”—that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>
in about six weeks. Her mother was
to go with her and establish herself in Paris.</p>
<p>“Really,” Barton thought, “it is brave of Helen,
and wonderfully unselfish as well.” That the girl
made a display of everything she did was not seen
by his blinded eyes.</p>
<p>Barton was expecting the Fullers over again in their
car on this Sunday, and had accordingly polished his
accoutrements and made his quarters presentable.
He shared these last with three other men; but they
were all off for the day, and he himself was duty-free
until taps.</p>
<p>So he was not at all surprised when he heard the
rustle of crisp skirts and a light tapping on his open
door. Before he could reply to the summons he heard
Morry Copley’s high voice advising:</p>
<p>“He must be there, Miss—ah—Really, I’m suah
he’s not gone out of the street this morning. I’ll
look around for him if I may?”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said a very cool voice. Morry was
evidently not being encouraged. And it was not
Helen Fuller who spoke.</p>
<p>“Miss Clayton!”</p>
<p>Barton appeared with hand outstretched and a
real welcome in his eyes. But Copley was not to be
easily ignored.</p>
<p>“I say, Barton,” he drawled, “I showed her over
here from the camp entrance, knowing you were at
home, don’t you know.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>“Thanks, old fellow,” Barton said. “This is Miss
Clayton’s first visit to the camp.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I knew that,” Copley agreed, boldly eyeing
the girl and showing no desire to relieve them of his
presence. One of Barton’s Western brother-rookies
would have accused the young exquisite of “horning
in.” “I’m suah if I’d ever seen—er—the lady here
before I should have remembered her.”</p>
<p>Ethel was plainly ruffled; but Frank Barton burst
into hearty laughter. He considered Morry quite
harmless.</p>
<p>“Miss Clayton, I am sure, will allow me to introduce
you, Copley,” he said cordially, and then
smiled at Ethel. “Mr. Copley comes from our town,
Miss Clayton.”</p>
<p>“Bah Jove! I saw you before in a tea room once,”
Morry burst out. “Suah I did! I was with Miss
Fuller, you know. I wonder I did not recognize
you before. You weren’t dressed the same, you
know.”</p>
<p>“If it was on a working day I am sure she was not
dressed the same,” Barton said, looking frankly his
approval of Ethel’s Sunday appearance.</p>
<p>And yet, as she stood bandying light conversation
with the two men, Ethel Clayton was secretly hurt.
Would Frank Barton have so casually introduced
Helen Fuller, for instance, to any companion-in-arms
who had forced himself upon them as Morry
Copley had? The thought stung her pride.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>Really Copley seemed more than a little interested
in her. He rattled on boldly, and there was not a
chance for her to divert his attention that she might
speak seriously and personally to the man she had
come to see.</p>
<p>The latter was unfeignedly glad to see her; but he
seemed to consider her visit merely a social one.
And that did not altogether please Ethel Clayton.
She had come strictly on business. At least, so she
had been assuring herself. Yet all Barton seemed
to care about the factory and its affairs was expressed
in a perfunctory:</p>
<p>“Everything going on all right at the works, Miss
Clayton? Though of course that is a superfluous
question with such capable people as you and Mayberry
on the job. I knew it would be that way.”</p>
<p>“Really, Mr. Barton, you must not assume too
much,” she hesitated, unable to approach clearly
before Morry Copley the matter that so troubled her
and that had brought her to Quehasset.</p>
<p>“I say,” drawled the latter, “you don’t mean to
say Miss Clayton is one of these really industrious
people—like yourself, Barton? Is she, too, a prop
and support of the Hapwood-Diller Company?”</p>
<p>“She most certainly is!” smiled the general manager.
“But I believe she brings me nothing but
good news. How about it, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>It was her chance—perhaps the best one she would
have to get him away from this chattering, inconsequential<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
Morry Copley. “I have one puzzle to consult
you about, Mr. Barton,” she began, when, with
a whir and clash of released gears, a big touring car
whirled around the corner and halted almost directly
before the shack.</p>
<p>“Oh, Jimminy Christmas, see who’s here!” ejaculated
Copley.</p>
<p>“Miss Fuller! Welcome to our city!” joined in
Barton, and hastily descended to the car.</p>
<p>Morry Copley remained lounging beside Ethel,
greeting the girl in the car with merely the semaphore
sign of good comradeship. Helen was alone,
having dropped her mother and father at the Staff
Headquarters. As had been said, Grandon Fuller
had once borne the title of “Colonel” and played the
fact now for all it was worth.</p>
<p>“Don’t let me keep you, Mr. Copley,” Ethel said
significantly.</p>
<p>“No chance!” drawled Morry. “Miss Fuller has
no use for me when Barton’s around. They talk
nothing but war and nursing. Gee! I hate to think
of folks getting all mussed up so.”</p>
<p>“Why, for pity’s sake, did you ever join this
camp?” Ethel asked, in astonishment.</p>
<p>“I rawther fancied myself in the uniform, don’t
you know,” he declared, but with twinkling eyes.
“I say!” he added, “they’re not going for a spin without
us?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>Ethel leaped to her feet and anger flashed from her
eyes, although Morry did not see it. Miss Fuller
was evidently trying to urge Barton to get into the
car. She had punched her starter button and the
car began to throb.</p>
<p>But Barton turned back to the two on the plank
porch of the shack. “Do come, Miss Clayton,” he
urged. “I promised I would take luncheon with
Miss Fuller to-day at the Mannerly Arms, and she
has not much time. It will be quite all right, I am
sure. If you have something to say to me——”</p>
<p>“My errand is strictly business, Mr. Barton,” Ethel
replied shortly.</p>
<p>“I am sure Miss Fuller will wait——”</p>
<p>“Oh, bring her along, <i>do</i>!” exclaimed Helen from
the car and with impatience. “Come on, Morry.
I know <i>you</i> are dying to take her. You’ll excuse me
for not getting out and begging you myself, Miss
Clayton,” she added carelessly. “I suppose it is
sometimes necessary to mix business with pleasure.
If you really <i>have</i> to consult Mr. Barton——”</p>
<p>“I will not detain him long, Miss Fuller,” Ethel
said, pale but firm. “I have neither time nor inclination
to go to lunch with you—and Mr. Copley.
She dismissed the latter with a curt nod, and he strolled
down to the car, grumbling, while Barton, a little
vexed, took his place beside the girl who he acknowledged
was so capable an assistant in the factory office.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>“I am sorry to interfere in any way with your
affairs, Mr. Barton,” Ethel hastened to say. “Had
I not believed the occasion serious——”</p>
<p>“Serious for me?” he asked quickly, eyeing her
curiously.</p>
<p>“Serious to the Hapwood-Diller Company,” she
replied stiffly. “Of course I have a double interest
in the welfare of the company. My mother’s income
depends upon its profits.”</p>
<p>“I know that your mother holds some of our stock,”
he said patiently.</p>
<p>“Therefore my particular interest may perhaps be
excused.” Ethel could not help saying this, if it was
a mite catty. She could not feel in any angelic mood
at the moment. “In addition, Mr. Barton, you
asked me to keep a watchful eye on things in the
office.”</p>
<p>“I did,” he said with gentleness.</p>
<p>She flushed more deeply. It was plain that he
was quite aware she had been hurt by Miss Fuller’s
manner; and that but increased Ethel’s vexation.
As though it really mattered what Helen Fuller did
or said!</p>
<p>He noted the flush and looked disturbed.</p>
<p>“Are you not feeling well?” he asked kindly.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, I am perfectly well,” she returned quickly.</p>
<p>“You look as if you might have a headache, or
something like that.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>“It wouldn’t matter if I did have,” she replied,
not knowing what else to say.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, it would. I don’t want you to work if
you are not well.”</p>
<p>“Here is the situation,” and she rushed on to state
the matter of the Bogata order with her usual brisk
explicitness.</p>
<p>Barton now gave close attention, and his changing
expression betrayed the value he put upon her story.
At its conclusion he demanded:</p>
<p>“But what’s the matter with Jim? He must know
that we all agreed those people were not to be trusted.”</p>
<p>“He did not agree to that, it is evident,” Ethel said
dryly. “In fact, his remembrance seems to be hazy
regarding the whole matter. Seems to think you
would have spoken to him about it again had you
not intended to accept the order.”</p>
<p>Barton made an impatient gesture. “That’s Jim
all over. Stubborn as a mule!” he exclaimed. “And
yet that very stubbornness makes him of value in
many circumstances.”</p>
<p>It was plain he had no real suspicion of Mayberry.
And Ethel was determined not to put forward just
at that time her own belief in the superintendent’s
treachery.</p>
<p>“And what have you done about the matter before
coming to me?” Barton asked with a curiosity
that Ethel thought she understood. He was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>
at all sure whether she had the initiative to balk this
thing which she believed was all wrong.</p>
<p>“Something wholly feminine, I fear,” she replied,
and told him of the accident to the order addressed
to the factory supply people.</p>
<p>Barton laughed shortly. Evidently he was not
displeased.</p>
<p>“I can see you have a very good reason for not
quarreling with Mayberry. Quite right. Things
would by no means go so smoothly if you two could
not work together. You retarded the order so that
you could see me to-day?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“And what do you expect me to do?”</p>
<p>“If that Bogata order is not to be filled, you can
telegraph the stock people to hold our order for correction.”</p>
<p>“Right! You certainly have a grasp of the situation,
as you always have, Miss Clayton,” he said
promptly. “I will dictate that telegram. You
can send it from the railroad station as you go back,
if you will.”</p>
<p>“Yes, Mr. Barton,” she responded, whipping out
her book and pencil.</p>
<p>He smiled covertly. She was all business now.</p>
<p>“Your suspicions are quite correct,” Barton observed.
“Somebody tampered with that letter and
order. I did not see the letter or the carbon copy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
it after signing the former. The Bogata people must
have a friend in our offices. Have you any idea——”</p>
<p>“No!” she exclaimed almost harshly.</p>
<p>If Barton could not see Jim Mayberry’s hand in
the affair surely it was not her place to tell him. He
seemed to ignore utterly the possibility of the superintendent’s
being the person guilty.</p>
<p>“The Bogata people cannot hold us to any such
terms,” Barton went on to say. “We did not accept
the order. Business—especially as important a
matter as this—is not so easily done. Their letter
was a good deal of a bluff as it stood. I should have
felt justified in throwing it and the schedule of their
order into my wastebasket. Jim Mayberry is green
yet. I’ll have you take word to him——”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Barton! if you do that you will make my
position terribly difficult,” she cried.</p>
<p>“True,” he admitted. “I suppose that is so. I
will communicate with Hammerly. He knows all
about the affairs of the Bogata people. We will let
him break the news to Jim,” and he laughed a little.</p>
<p>“You see, Miss Clayton, we must expect such
mistakes as this to creep in when a fellow is like Jim.
He has all the knowledge of the business that is necessary,
I am sure. But he is likely to make mistakes—at
first.”</p>
<p>She looked at the manager in wonder. Was it
possible that his old-time interest in Jim Mayberry,
and the fact that they had been friends for so long,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>
utterly blinded Barton to the superintendent’s faults?</p>
<p>“You have a quicker mind than Jim,” went on
Barton, easily, “and you haven’t his stubbornness.
I really would not dare accept my lieutenancy and
ask for active duty if Jim had not you at his elbow.
I know you will not let him make any serious error.”</p>
<p>“But, Mr. Barton!” she cried, under her breath,
“you do not expect really to leave the country so
quickly?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps. I have offered my services. I have
got my commission. Really, my work here has
been somewhat like a review of former studies. And
officers are needed——”</p>
<p>“Not <i>over there</i>?” Ethel gasped.</p>
<p>He did not chance to see her face as he replied
quietly: “So we expect. We are not supposed to
talk of it. Certain movements of the War Department
are kept secret. But whatever happens to
me I am confident you and Jim will conduct the
affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company successfully.
Why, this proves it! What he overlooks you will
not miss. Now, will you take a letter to Mr. Hammerly?”</p>
<p>She held her pencil poised in readiness and nodded.
Surely at that moment she could not have uttered a
word. He began to dictate, and the letter was
couched in such terms as to show his belief that Jim
Mayberry was perfectly innocent of all guile in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>
matter. However, when it was concluded, Barton
said reflectively:</p>
<p>“But there is a traitor in the offices, Miss Clayton.
That we know it must put you and Mayberry both
on guard. I depend on you particularly to watch for
the guilty party.”</p>
<p>“And suppose I find him?” she demanded quickly.</p>
<p>“If you cannot reach me,” Barton gravely told her,
“then—then go to Mr. Hammerly. Cross-grained
as he is, he is perfectly honest. Besides,” he added,
“next to Mr. Grandon Fuller, he owns more stock
in the Hapwood-Diller Company than anybody else.”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XI<br>
<small>WAR IS DECLARED</small></h2>
</div>
<p>“<span class="smcap">For pity’s</span> sake, Mr. Barton, <i>do</i> come away,”
Helen Fuller cried at last. “We’ll <i>never</i> have time
for luncheon.”</p>
<p>“Beg pardon. Business must be attended to before
we can take our pleasure, always,” and Frank
Barton laughed.</p>
<p>But Ethel’s countenance was quite composed again.
She did not even glance in Miss Fuller’s direction as
she closed the notebook and put it and the pencil into
her bag.</p>
<p>“Good-day, Miss Clayton,” Barton said, taking
her hand. “I will not thank you for coming to me
on this business, for I know your deep interest in
the company’s affairs. That was merely your duty.
But to see you again has been a pleasure. Even
should I be assigned to foreign duty suddenly, I
shall hope to see all my Mailsburg friends at least
once before I sail. I send my regards to everybody
in the office.”</p>
<p>It was like that. He did not consider her call a
personal one. Yet that was not altogether Frank
Barton’s fault, for Ethel had made it plain that she
had come only on business. The young manager<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
of the Hapwood-Diller Company was no more dense
than any other man.</p>
<p>Helen’s voice, with a tartness in it that could not
be mistaken, reached them again:</p>
<p>“<i>Do</i> hurry, Mr. Barton! I presume if you were
fighting in the trenches it would all have to stop
while you gave your attention to some factory matter.”</p>
<p>He laughed and ran down the steps to the car.
The engine of the latter began to roar again.</p>
<p>“Coming, Morry?” Helen asked, as the wheels began
to revolve.</p>
<p>“Two’s company, three’s a gang,” he drawled,
waving his hand. “Farewell. I am going to show
Miss Clayton around the camp.”</p>
<p>This he insisted on doing. After the brusk departure
of Barton in the car Ethel was too proud to
show any chagrin. Besides, Morry Copley was evidently
desirous of pleasing her. She noted that he
had assumed quite a military carriage and concluded
that his few weeks in camp had done him a world of
good.</p>
<p>“Won’t you let me call on you when I come back
to Mailsburg on furlough, Miss Clayton?” he asked,
when he had showed her everything of general interest
in the camp.</p>
<p>“Most certainly not!” Ethel exclaimed bluntly.
“You know very well Mrs. Copley would be horrified
if you visited a working girl, Mr. Copley.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>“Aw, fiddle!” returned Morry in disgust, “I’m not
half as much tied to her apron strings as you think.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps you should be,” Ethel laughed. “What
will she say if you really are ordered to France?”</p>
<p>“Mothaw really thinks this is all play. She has
no idea we’ll really go. At least, not such fellows
as Bradley and me.”</p>
<p>“And—will you?” Ethel wickedly observed.</p>
<p>“If I get my commission I’ll be off before she knows
it—poor dear lady,” he declared. “Don’t you people
in Mailsburg fret. There are some men in this camp
besides Frank Barton.”</p>
<p>Ethel sent the telegram holding up the stock order
as instructed by Barton, and when she arrived home
late in the afternoon she transcribed her notes of the
letter to Mr. Macon Hammerly and sent it to that
gentleman by special messenger. The latter appeared
in the offices of the Hapwood-Diller Company early
on Monday morning. For once he seemed to wish
to catch Jim Mayberry at his desk.</p>
<p>“Let’s see,” scowled Macon Hammerly, eyeing
the superintendent blackly, “have you managed to
find a hat in town big enough for you, Jim?”</p>
<p>“I have ’em made to order—and stretchable,”
grinned the younger man, never at a loss for an answer
when he met Hammerly, whom he just as cordially
disliked as Hammerly disliked him. “What’s biting
you now?”</p>
<p>“A suspicion that you have a swelled head is eating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>
on me,” frankly announced the old grain dealer,
his bushy eyebrows meeting again. “I’ve come to
give you a mite of advice.”</p>
<p>“Thanks!” returned Mayberry, encouragingly.
“I’ve been expecting this visit ever since Frank went
away. It must have pained you to keep away so
long.”</p>
<p>“Not exactly,” returned Hammerly. “It’s only
surprised me that I haven’t had to come around before.
I told Barton I’d keep an eye on you.”</p>
<p>“Thanks again,” growled Mayberry, and this time
he did not look so pleasant. Hammerly was quite
unmoved.</p>
<p>“Here’s the trouble,” he said, quietly watching the
superintendent. “Barton wrote me to look up the
Bogata people again.”</p>
<p>The hit was palpable. Mayberry jumped in his
chair. He lifted his face to stare at the old man in
open surprise.</p>
<p>“Seems there’s an order kicking around the office
here from them. Barton had his doubts about accepting
it. Now there <i>is</i> no doubt. You’re not to
do a stroke of work on those goods.”</p>
<p>“Who says so?” snapped Mayberry. “Who’s in
charge here, I want to know, Mr. Hammerly?”</p>
<p>“<i>You</i> won’t be,” said the other softly, “if you don’t
take well meant advice.”</p>
<p>“Why! that order’s been accepted long ago. I’ve<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
ordered some of the stock. I’ve planned to begin the
work this week.”</p>
<p>“Change your plans, Jim Mayberry. Change your
plans,” said Hammerly in a more threatening voice.
“You’re not in power here. Barton may come back
any day and polish you off. And this Bogata business
is settled—for all time. Don’t make a mistake.”</p>
<p>“Why, we can’t——”</p>
<p>“You’re right. You can’t fill the order. Pull in
your horns. The Bogata Company are going to
have a New Year’s present of a receivership. And
I’m hanged if I’ll stand by and see them try to bolster
up their rotten credit with the credit of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. They don’t happen to owe this
firm anything, Jim; but they owe everybody else in
the world who would give ’em a cent’s worth of credit.
You kill their order.”</p>
<p>“I tell you it can’t be done,” muttered Mayberry.</p>
<p>“If you don’t Barton will come here and do it himself.
He’s already wired your supply people to hold
that order you sent for correction. You’re not going
to run this factory into debt one penny’s worth
to aid the Bogata people.”</p>
<p>Mayberry sprang up, his heavy face aflame. “If
you were a younger man, Mr. Hammerly——”</p>
<p>“Forget my age, Jim. I’ve never seen the day yet
that I couldn’t handle a chap of your size and shape,”
and he let his keen eye run over Mayberry’s obese
figure. “You’re as stubborn as a mule. Perhaps<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>
that’s all the matter with you. But you’ve got your
instructions. All you need to do is to follow them.
Write to the Bogata people and tell them this factory
can’t fill their order.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see by what right——”</p>
<p>“None at all. I’m butting in,” said Hammerly
turning to the door. “But you’d better think it
over.” He went out chuckling, and after a while
Mayberry cooled down. He knew well enough
Hammerly’s power on the board. He soon grew calm
enough to study the thing out.</p>
<p>Barton had called on Hammerly for advice again.
How had Barton heard of the Bogata matter? Just
one answer to that question. Ethel Clayton!</p>
<p>Mayberry’s expression when he came to this conclusion
boded ill for Ethel. He knew just how he
stood personally with her. Not that he cared more
for Ethel Clayton in the first place than he did for
half a dozen other girls. Only it had piqued him
that she should have been so disdainful of his advances.</p>
<p>Now he had a real reason, he told himself, for considering
Ethel in the light of an enemy. She had
thwarted his intention of jamming the Bogata order
through the factory before Barton became aware of
what he was doing. The success of the scheme meant
much in a financial way to the superintendent.</p>
<p>Now he could not do it. It was true that he had
got his orders from the old grain merchant. Hammerly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>
would surely keep his eye on him hereafter—if
he had not already been doing so.</p>
<p>Mayberry knew he had a friend in Grandon Fuller.
But he did not know yet just how much of a friend
Mr. Fuller was. Nor why he was friendly with him!
Mr. Fuller had not yet shown his hand.</p>
<p>Fuller was the heaviest stockholder in the Hapwood-Diller
Company and was, of course, on the
board of directors. But it was doubtful if he could
swing more votes than Macon Hammerly.</p>
<p>Angry as he was, Mayberry felt that it would be
the part of wisdom to keep from an open break with
the grain dealer. Besides, Barton had not gone to
France yet—if he ever did.</p>
<p>A telegram came from the supply house:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>“We hold your order as requested subject to correction.”</p>
</div>
<p>Mayberry sent for Ethel.</p>
<p>“What do you know about this, Ethel?” he demanded,
glowering at her as she read the telegram.</p>
<p>“Just as much as you do, Mr. Mayberry,” she declared,
composedly enough.</p>
<p>He thought that over a bit. Then he dictated a
a letter to the Bogata Company bluntly refusing to
fill their order and without even explaining or apologizing
for the seeming delay in answering their letter.
He had managed to do exactly what Barton had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>
tried to avoid—giving the Bogata people offence.
If the miracle happened, and the Bogata people
“came back,” they would never feel friendly again
toward the Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p>As for Mayberry and Ethel, war was declared between
them. There could be no further doubt of it.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XII<br>
<small>THE IMAGE HE TOOK AWAY</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Although</span> Frank Barton was still manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company, he had turned his salary
back into the treasury of the concern ever since joining
the training camp at Lake Quehasset.</p>
<p>It was not long after the flurry regarding the Bogata
Company order that a suggestion was made in the
directors meeting of the Hapwood-Diller Company
that Barton be removed and Mayberry be put in his
place as manager. The suggestion came from Grandon
Fuller. Macon Hammerly opposed it.</p>
<p>“I am told that Barton will sail shortly with a contingent
of our brave boys for the other side,” Mr.
Fuller declared pompously. “I fancy he has merely
neglected to resign in the stress of other business.
Mr. Mayberry has shown his ability and capacity for
management. I do not see why Brother Hammerly
should object.”</p>
<p>“Patriotic reasons,” said the opposing member of
the board dryly. “I object to kicking a fellow out of
his job because he is going off to fight his country’s
battles. Let things rest as they are, Fuller.”</p>
<p>“Do you mean all through the war?” demanded
Mr. Fuller, with some heat.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>“Why not? Frank Barton pulled this company
out of a slough of despond that pretty near swamped
us. If he comes back alive I, for one, want to see
him manager again.”</p>
<p>“But what about Mr. Mayberry?”</p>
<p>“How is <i>he</i> hurt?” snorted the old grain merchant.
“He’s sitting here, tight enough, while another man
is fighting in his place. The least he can do is to hold
Barton’s job for him.”</p>
<p>That killed the suggestion for the time being. The
matter leaked out of the board room, however, and
Ethel Clayton heard of it. She wondered if, after
all, the Fullers were such good friends of Frank Barton
as they seemed to be.</p>
<p>Likewise she began to wonder what would happen
to her if Jim Mayberry ever got the full power over
the office force that he had in the factory. He might
then discharge her on some easily trumped-up pretext.
The thought was not a pleasant one.</p>
<p>Of late, on several occasions Mayberry had criticized
her work, especially her management of the
office staff. He aimed some shafts of his rough wit,
too, at Benway Chase, although he could find no
complaint to make in the new clerk’s work.</p>
<p>For Benway really showed a remarkable aptitude
for his position. He was always energetic. When
a member of the shipping room force was away for
a while, Benway took on the duties of checker in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
addition to his usual work, which latter he did not
in the least neglect.</p>
<p>When Mayberry noticed this he said:</p>
<p>“So you are out to master the whole business, are
you, Chase? Going to be the wheelhorse, driver and
spotted dog under the hind axle.”</p>
<p>“I told you, Mr. Mayberry, I was out for your job,”
Benway said coolly. “Every little bit a fellow learns
puts him so much farther ahead.”</p>
<p>“Think so, do you?” sneered the superintendent.</p>
<p>But Ethel knew Benway was getting a firm grasp
on the details of the office work that made him exceedingly
useful. He very quietly relieved her of some of
the duties which had a way of falling upon her
shoulders.</p>
<p>Barton had been in the habit of depending on her
bright mind and willingness to a great degree. Mayberry
deliberately shirked much of the routine work as
he could. And of course it all fell upon Ethel and
made her burden the heavier to bear. Sometimes
she was held at her post until long after the others
were gone for the day.</p>
<p>Benway Chase would have remained to help or to
accompany her home on these occasions had she
allowed him to, and she had fairly to drive Little
Skinner home. The latter would have done all
Ethel’s work for her had she been able.</p>
<p>“Take it from me!” the slangy Mabel declared.
“That Jim Mayberry lets you slave here while he’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>
playin’ poker down to the Bellevue or runnin’ about
the country in that flivver of his. I wish’t Mr. Barton
would come back. He wouldn’t see you abused.
Miss Clayton—’deed he wouldn’t!”</p>
<p>Ethel had not heard from Barton since her visit
to the training camp, although she wrote to him
briefly each week as she had promised. Nothing
special had arisen in the daily affairs of the Hapwood-Diller
Company to cause her sufficient worry to
bring it to Barton’s notice. And with the little
trials, of course, she had no intention of troubling
him.</p>
<p>Mailsburg’s first quota of drafted men marched past
the factory one day to the railway station. The
streets were lined with silent people for the most part.
But the buildings were cheerful with bunting and
flags. It was Ethel who insisted that the factory
front be decorated in addition to the great silk flag
which Barton had raised first with his own hands and
which John raised each morning and took in at night.</p>
<p>Mayberry grudgingly shut down the shops for an
hour that the hands might cheer more than a hundred
of the drafted men who had left the Hapwood-Diller
Company to don the army khaki.</p>
<p>Service flags began to appear all over the town
after that. Mrs. Trevor, Barton’s former landlady,
hung out one with a single star on it, and Ethel was
told that the grim old woman kept Barton’s chair
at the table for him and allowed nobody to sit in it.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>Almost every day something happened to remind
Ethel that the war was coming closer and closer to her.
Her mother was knitting for the Red Cross. She
did not say much about this work save to mention
with a sniff that she hoped she could turn out as
good work as those snips of girls she saw knitting
in the cars and on the park benches.</p>
<p>“And I expect to see them take those awful looking
knitting bags to church with them one of these days,”
was likewise Mrs. Clayton’s tart comment.</p>
<p>One day Ethel saw Morry Copley in town. It was
while she was out to lunch and, without seeing her,
he bustled past so importantly that she could not
escape the thought that there must be something
afoot—perhaps some assignment of troops or officers
that affected Frank Barton as well. Morry wore the
insignia of a second-lieutenant.</p>
<p>She hurried back to the office with the expectation
of seeing Barton. Surely he would not come to town
without looking in upon them! But the afternoon
dragged by without his appearance. She said nothing
to her office mates regarding her expectations.</p>
<p>Each time the door opened she started and looked
up, expecting to see him—tall and handsome in his
khaki—enter the office. It made her nervous. There
were mistakes in her work that put her back so she
had to remain after hours again. When Benway
wanted to help her she snapped at him and sent that
surprised young man home “with a flea in his ear.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Barton had
been cooling his heels in the Fullers’ reception hall.
He had sent up his card to Helen and the maid had
come down to say that the young lady was very busy.
Would Monsieur wait?</p>
<p>Monsieur would—most assuredly he would! He
had not seen or heard from Miss Fuller since the Sunday
on which both she and Ethel Clayton had chanced
to come to Camp Quehasset. And now, save for a
conference with Mr. Hammerly, he had sacrificed
most of his time in Mailsburg to speak confidentially
to Grandon Fuller’s daughter.</p>
<p>He waited her pleasure with such patience as he
could master. He had come to think of Helen during
most of his waking hours. At least if his military
duties and studies were to the fore, the thought
of Helen was ever present in the back of his mind.</p>
<p>She was going to France he knew; but he might
never see her over there. Just now he was feeling
very keenly the fact that he was assigned to the Front
and that he might, within a very short period, be in
desperate danger of death.</p>
<p>A precious hour and more he waited. Occasionally
he saw a soft-footed serving man or a maid
pass his lonely alcove. Nobody spoke to him. Finally
the noise of a car under the porte-cochère awoke
hollow echoes. Immediately the sound of voices
came from above. Down the broad staircase tripped
Helen.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>“Oh, mercy <i>me</i>, Mr. Barton! Are <i>you</i> here? And
waiting <i>all</i> this time? That stupid maid! I was
so busy with my dressmaker that I could not possibly
come. And then—the maid never reminded me.”</p>
<p>She might have delivered him a physical blow in
the face and he would have felt or shown it no more
keenly. She was gorgeous in frock and hat, and she
smiled upon him in her old alluring way. But his
spirit fell from its heights. A dressmaker had been
of more importance! She had depended upon her
maid to remind her that he was waiting to see her!</p>
<p>“I hoped to see you for a few minutes, Miss Helen,”
he said quietly. “I am going away.”</p>
<p>“Of course! So am I!” she cried. “But I must
be off now to the Northup’s dinner. The car is waiting.
It’s too late for me to refuse, Mr. Barton.
And there is a dance afterward that I positively
<i>must</i> look in at. Dear <i>me</i>! I’ll really be <i>glad</i> to be
over there and at work in a hospital. This running
around to dinners and dances and what Morry Copley
calls ‘tea-fights’, is just killing me.</p>
<p>“Can’t I see you in the morning, Frank?”</p>
<p>He wanted to tell her that in the morning he would
already be at sea. But that was forbidden.</p>
<p>“I am afraid not. I have to go back on the eight-ten.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Not so <i>soon</i>! Really?” There was much lacking
in her tone—much of warmth that he had expected.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>
“Well, best of luck! Hope to see you ‘over there,’
you know. Bye-bye!”</p>
<p>She ran out to the car, turning to wave her hand
as she got in. And that after he had waited an hour!
Had Macon Hammerly been right after all? He had
said:</p>
<p>“The Fullers only want you for what they can get
out of you. Grandon Fuller was never known yet
to do anything without a purpose behind it. Look
how he hung about Israel Diller—was right on the
spot when the old chap died. You don’t suppose
Diller made Grandon Fuller rich because he <i>deserved</i>
riches, do you?”</p>
<p>His wasted hour caused Barton to miss the office
force at the factory; but he went that way to the station,
hoping to see Mayberry at least. His mastery
of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s affairs seemed a
long way behind him now. Indeed when a man faces
war the past grows small to him in any case. It is
what is going to happen to him that completely obsesses
his thought.</p>
<p>Barton thrust his head in at the office door, having
opened it softly. A single strong light was ablaze
over Ethel Clayton’s desk. The remainder of the
room was in shadow.</p>
<p>The girl had evidently finished the task that had
kept her so late, for her desk was cleared up and she
sat back in her chair, dreaming. Her gaze was fixed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
on the door of the private office; but Frank Barton
could not see her face until he spoke.</p>
<p>“Nobody here but you, Miss Clayton? I am certainly
glad to see you. All the rest gone?”</p>
<p>She turned her face toward him slowly, appearing
not to be startled at all by his coming. “They are
all gone, Mr. Barton,” she said quietly, and reached
up quickly to turn the shade of the electric lamp so
that the light no longer fell on her face.</p>
<p>“Mayberry gone, too?” he asked, coming in with
his hand held out.</p>
<p>“He is out of town, I believe,” Ethel told him, her
voice unshaken, rising to meet him.</p>
<p>“I am sorry I missed them all,” Barton said, grasping
her hand for a moment warmly. “You will
have to give them my regards and best wishes.”</p>
<p>“Will you not stay over night?”</p>
<p>“I fear that will be impossible. I am on my way
to catch the eight-ten.”</p>
<p>“You are not going away <i>now</i>? Not for <i>good</i>?”</p>
<p>Barton laughed. “I hope to come back safely,” he
said. “But this is good-bye for some time, Miss
Clayton——”</p>
<p>He caught her arm and steadied her as she swung
against the desk. Her eyes closed and he saw suddenly
that she was very pale.</p>
<p>“Are you faint? You’re working too hard!” he
cried. “Look here, Miss Clayton, you must take
better care of yourself. I shouldn’t feel half so safe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>
in going away if you were not right here on the job.
You’ve got to be good to yourself.”</p>
<p>“I—I was a little faint. It’s all right, Mr. Barton,”
she murmured. “Nothing serious, I assure you.
I’m not one of the fainting kind, as you know.”</p>
<p>“No indeed!” he cried admiringly. “I bank on
you and your very good sense, Miss Clayton. You
are not like other girls. I did not know for a moment
but that my announcement startled you. I should
have been flattered!” and he laughed.</p>
<p>She was silent. He could not see her face well, for
she kept it turned from the lamp. Finally she said:
“Naturally I am troubled that you should be going—so
far away. Oh, this war is terrible, Mr. Barton!”</p>
<p>“Yes. All wars have been terrible. The one that
touches you nearest seems the most terrible. But
after all, Miss Clayton, it doesn’t matter much how
one dies as long as death is inevitable.”</p>
<p>“That is fatalism! Perhaps it is the right soldier
spirit,” she murmured. Then she turned to face him
again and her countenance was quietly radiant. “But
why should we who stop at home add to your burdens?
We should send you away with a smile.”</p>
<p>“I wonder!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if we fellows
ought not to go away with a smile—to furnish those
we leave behind with courage? Those we leave behind
must do our work. War is waste, you know,
when all is said and done. I leave you, Miss Clayton,
to keep things straight here,” and he smiled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>
warmly again as his hand once more sought hers.
“Write to me,” and he told her how to address him
through the War Department. “Good-bye!”</p>
<p>He wheeled swiftly and marched to the door. His
upright carriage and squared shoulders made his
back look almost strange to her. She stood before
the desk leaning against it, her hands clinging tightly
to its edge. Her knuckles were perfectly white from
the pressure of her hands upon the wood—that grasp
which actually kept her from falling.</p>
<p>But her face showed none of her terror and weakness.
He turned at the door to smile and nod to her again.
The image he took away in his mind was of her perfectly
composed, smiling face. And again it was the
memory of Ethel Clayton, not of Helen Fuller, that
he carried away as the Girl He Left Behind.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIII<br>
<small>THE AWAKENING</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Frank Barton</span> had gone to the Front. He would
be where there was battle, murder, and sudden death!
War had become a horrid, living reality to Ethel
Clayton.</p>
<p>She heard that Morrison Copley had been in
town to bid his mother good-bye and had gone away,
too, bound for the transport. Likewise that Charlie
Bradley, that hulking fellow who had been so notorious
about town, supposedly had sailed at the same
time Barton had gone to France.</p>
<p>Ethel had occasion to pass the Fuller house within
the week. It was shuttered and empty looking.
The <i>Clarion</i> had told, in a column and a half, of the
last reception tendered Helen Fuller and her mother
before their departure. Grandon Fuller was living
at the Bellevue and seemed rather relieved than
otherwise, so people said, that his wife and daughter
had gone abroad.</p>
<p>But Ethel did not scoff now—she had never done
so openly—at the idea of flighty Helen Fuller settling
down to Red Cross work. Secretly she wished that
she, too, were on the way to France. Suppose Frank
Barton should be wounded! Some woman would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
attend him in the hospital. It might even fall to
Helen’s lot. Had Ethel gone to France it might be
her fate to nurse Barton.</p>
<p>She felt a sudden and bitter distaste for her work
in the offices of the Hapwood-Diller Company. The
drab business affairs of every day disgusted her.
Although she neglected nothing, Ethel had no satisfaction
in what she did.</p>
<p>The war filled more and more space in the daily
papers. But there was no news of the Rainbow
Division, with which it was believed Barton and the
other young officers from Mailsburg had sailed.
Everything was so secretly done!</p>
<p>There was the story that sifted back from France
to the families of some of the soldiers of the unit from
the West, who thought they were bound for New
York by train, but who found themselves alighting
in New Orleans and going aboard the troop ships
there, to sail for southern France by the way of
Gibraltar.</p>
<p>The fact that the country was honeycombed by
German and Austrian spies, and by those whom the
enemy’s money could buy, was becoming slowly a
settled conviction, even in Mailsburg. Those of
German birth and name would in time be ostracised.
It could not be helped. It was in the nature of
things.</p>
<p>The man who in war time calls himself too broad-minded
to hate the enemy is often one who has not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>
yet awakened to the seriousness of war. The enemy-alien
in our midst should tremble for his personal
safety. Otherwise he becomes a menace.</p>
<p>Just off Burnaby Street was a little shop where,
ever since Ethel was a child, had sat a little old German
cobbling shoes. He was a marked character
in this part of the town where the residents were
mostly of the old, native American stock.</p>
<p>Somebody has said that the trade of tailor breeds
socialists and pessimists. So being a cobbler used
to breed philosophers of a kindly sort. Gessler had
been wont to hand out bits of homely and comfortable
philosophy with his mended shoes.</p>
<p>The war had changed his attitude toward life, it
seemed. Until the United States had got into it he
had talked eagerly with everybody who would listen.</p>
<p>The Kaiser he hated, for he was a “Prussian,
arrogant and brutal.”</p>
<p>“My father used always to say that there would
be war if that bloodhound came to the throne!”
he frequently said. But he likewise was proud of
his race. “The whole world is fighting them and
can’t beat them already!” he cried.</p>
<p>Now that his adopted country was arraigned against
the fatherland, Gessler was very glum and silent.
He did not have so much work as before; but he sat
all day on his cobbler’s bench, his hammer in his
hand, often staring out of the window with empty
eyes.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>On her way to work one morning Ethel carried a
pair of shoes to be mended. But when she reached
the corner in sight of which the little German’s shop
stood, she hesitated. How could she approach Gessler
and speak to him with that pleasant familiarity
that had been her custom.</p>
<p>She could think of him only now as an enemy.
Every German was an enemy! His countrymen in
their terrible undersea craft might sink the transport
upon which Frank Barton had sailed. The war had
come home to Ethel Clayton! It was real to her at
last, as it becomes real to everybody who has a personal
stake in it.</p>
<p>She took the shoes to another cobbler and went
on her way to the office.</p>
<p>These days Ethel was almost vexed with Benway
Chase because he continued to be so enthusiastic
about his work and interested in it. He never seemed
to flag in his tasks; and he might really be, as he had
laughingly said, fitting himself for Jim Mayberry’s
position.</p>
<p>He spent most of his noon hour talking with the
foremen of the different shops. He learned much
about the practical working of the factory system;
yet he never neglected his own particular tasks.</p>
<p>Mabel Skinner still considered Benway the most
wonderful young man who had ever crossed her path;
but she worshiped from afar. She did not dream
of preening her poor plumage to attract his notice;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>
yet when he smiled at her in good comradeship
Little Skinner was secretly in ecstasies.</p>
<p>“Gee!” she confided to Boots, her errant brother,
on one occasion, “when Mr. Chase asked me did I
like flowers, an’ give me some of them late asters from
his mother’s garden, I almost swallowed my gum!”</p>
<p>“Cracky!” scoffed Boots. “That poor fish? Why,
he ain’t got but one good wing!”</p>
<p>“An’ he can put over a spitter with that that <i>you</i>
can’t hit, Smartie,” retorted his sister vigorously.
“And he’s a gentleman, Mr. Chase is!”</p>
<p>“Cracky!” repeated Boots. “Seems to me, if I
was a girl I’d fall for a feller that could gimme something
besides a flower an’ a sweet smile. Like that
Jim Mayberry. He’s got a flivver and could take
you ridin’.”</p>
<p>“He only took me once,” said Mabel complacently.
“And I guess he must have give you a ride in his
buzz-cart, too, that time, or you wouldn’t have give
me that dream about Jim and Sam Blaisdell of
Norville workin’ in cahoots against Mr. Barton.”</p>
<p>“Huh! That warn’t no dream,” grumbled Boots.
“You think you’re allus so smart, Mab Skinner. I
heard ’em talkin’ all right ’bout how to do Mr. Barton.
And it had something to do with the Bogata
works down to Norville, just as I told you.”</p>
<p>“Well, that egg never hatched, then,” declared his
dubious sister.</p>
<p>They might have suspected the incubation of another<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>
egg had she known how often Jim Mayberry
was in consultation with Mr. Grandon Fuller these
days at the Bellevue, although Mabel Skinner of
course knew little about the inside affairs of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. It might have aroused any
person’s suspicions to mark the superintendent’s intimacy
with the largest stockholder of the concern.</p>
<p>Mr. Fuller had not again suggested the removal of
Barton and the appointment of Mayberry as manager.
Indeed, with the former already out of the country
and in the Service, that change did not seem necessary
to the carrying to conclusion of any schemes
Mr. Fuller might have.</p>
<p>Not that there was anything wrong showing on
the surface of affairs. The factory seemed to be running
quite as usual. But as the end of the business
year approached Ethel could not fail to note that the
reports on output were not so favorable as they had
been earlier in the year. As, of course, it was not
really within the compass of her work she could not
discover why this should be.</p>
<p>From the very day Mayberry had been balked in
his endeavor to put the Bogata order through, the
tide of fortune for the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing
Company seemed to have turned. The superintendent
never spoke again about the Bogata Company
to Ethel. The latter knew, however, that Hammerly’s
prophecy regarding a receivership for that concern
had come true—and that before the new year.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>In the matter of the shop reports the girl was
puzzled and alarmed. It did not seem to be anybody’s
fault; certainly Mayberry did not neglect his
supervision of the factory, and most of the foremen
were old and faithful employees.</p>
<p>The report of the corporation compared unfavorably
with the last report. A good deal of money was
tied up in raw material. Contracts unfilled and bills
not yet collectible were items that bulked big on
the wrong side of the ledger.</p>
<p>The board voted the usual dividend; but the surplus
was much reduced thereby. And then, suddenly
and like the bursting of a bomb, trouble came.</p>
<p>The Hapwood-Diller Company stock was listed in
the market; that is, it was traded in by the curb
brokers both in State and Broad Streets. One morning
Hammerly came raging into the offices, his
<i>Financial Gazette</i> in his hand, his spectacles pushed
up to the line of his grizzled hair, and his eyes fairly
snapping.</p>
<p>“What’s the meaning of this, I want to know?”
he cried, shaking the financial sheet under Jim Mayberry’s
nose as that young man appeared from the
manager’s office. “Do you know anything about
this?”</p>
<p>“About what, Mr. Hammerly?”</p>
<p>“This trading in Hapwood-Diller shares? It’s been
going on for a week, I understand. Yesterday three
hundred shares was sold for eighty-nine—eleven<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>
points off. Never heard of such a thing! Who’s
selling?”</p>
<p>“Why, bless your heart, Mr. Hammerly,” said the
superintendent, “I don’t know. I own only fifty
shares and I haven’t sold them, I can assure you.”</p>
<p>“Some tarnal fool is dumping his shares on the market,
and at a bad time. Right after such a poor showing
as was made by our last report. If Frank Barton
was on the job such a report would never have been
made.”</p>
<p>Mayberry flushed. “No man can make bricks
without straw, Mr. Hammerly,” he said.</p>
<p>“Huh?” snorted the grain dealer. “Who ever
told you they made bricks of straw? That’s about
all you know, Jim Mayberry. They make bricks
with clay around these parts. You ain’t in Egypt.
But that ain’t neither here nor there. This here
selling of shares—and maybe these were only wash
sales?” added the suspicious old man. “Here! let
me see the stock book, Mayberry.”</p>
<p>“Ask Ethel for that,” returned the superintendent
sharply, and, turning on his heel, walked away.</p>
<p>Mr. Hammerly looked after him with lowering
brow. “Ha!” he muttered, “mighty independent of
a sudden. Now, I wonder what that means?”</p>
<p>But he was as pleasant as usual with Ethel. Macon
Hammerly approved of her. He retired to a corner
seat to study the list of names to whom stock, at the
reorganization after Israel’s Diller’s death, had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>
issued. Most of the local owners of the shares had
clung to all their original allotment, even through
the depression at the beginning of the war before
Frank Barton had been elevated to the management
of the concern’s affairs.</p>
<p>The Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company had
always been a very close corporation. There were
some Diller and Hapwood heirs in the West and South
who had traded off their shares in the corporation;
but nobody knew better than Mr. Macon Hammerly
just where those shares lay. At least, up to this date
he thought he knew where the bulk of them were.</p>
<p>The next shock to the working force of the Company,
as well as to the board, was the turning back
of the entire order billed to the Kimberly Binding
Company. The order amounted to twelve thousand
dollars. The goods were not according to specifications.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry denied all responsibility for this
error. The Kimberly order had been received and
the contract signed by Barton. Mayberry showed
that the shop sheets covering the contract had been
followed exactly by the workmen. The duplicates of
these papers in the office were the same as the working
plans in every particular.</p>
<p>But the Kimberly Company produced its copy of
the specifications with two differences in it, one of
dimension and the other of quality, changes which
made the finished product absolutely useless to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>
Kimberly people. Or for anybody else, for that matter!
The product could merely go into the scrap
heap.</p>
<p>There was a live tilt in the board meeting that day
between Mr. Grandon Fuller and his followers, and
Mr. Macon Hammerly. Ethel was in and out of the
room to take dictation, and to furnish books and figures
when required, so she heard much of the wrangle.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry sat sullenly in his place at the table
and had only one declaration to repeat: It was not
up to him! Mr. Fuller did most of the talking.</p>
<p>Barton’s name was signed to the Kimberly schedule.
He had O. K.’d it. Two bad errors had crept
into the specifications and the now absent manager
had overlooked them.</p>
<p>“And he was <i>absent</i>, all right, before ever he left
here,” Fuller scoffed. “Absent in his mind if not in
body. And his absent-mindedness has cost us a
pretty penny. I can see right now that this board
will have to pass the next dividend.”</p>
<p>The very next day a block of five thousand shares
sold in Boston for eighty-seven and a half and two
hundred in the New York market for eight-seven flat.</p>
<p>One evening Ethel came home from work to be
greeted by her mother in a flurried state of mind.</p>
<p>“Good land, Ethel! What’s the matter with the
Hapwood-Diller Company now? I feared how it
would be if Frank Barton went away.”</p>
<p>Ethel keenly remembered her mother’s expressed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
doubt of Mr. Barton’s having much to do with the
prosperity of the concern. Now she asked Mrs.
Clayton:</p>
<p>“What do you think is the matter at the factory?
I don’t know what you mean.”</p>
<p>“Well, I want to know! And you working right
there, too. Here this little lawyer comes around and
offers me a ridiculous price for our shares——”</p>
<p>“What lawyer?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know him. He says he’s from New York.
Here’s his card,” and she handed to Ethel a card on
which was engraved “A. Schuster, Atty.” and an
address in a Wall Street building.</p>
<p>“Anyway, he seems to think he can buy our stock
for sixty-five dollars. That’s all he’ll offer and he
just laughed and laughed when I told him the shares
of the Hapwood-Diller Company had never been
worth less than a hundred dollars apiece since they
were printed.”</p>
<p>“What did he say to that?” asked her more than
curious daughter.</p>
<p>“He declared sixty-five was better than it would
sell in the market in a month, unless the company
was reorganized and put on a paying basis. I wonder
what Grandon Fuller or Hammerly would say
to that? And you ought to know the truth, Ethel,”
added the worried woman. “Aren’t things going
right in the office now that Frank Barton’s gone
away?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>“There is nothing to worry over,” her daughter said
stoutly.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s what I told that little lawyer,” Mrs.
Clayton declared. “I said we’d just got our dividend
check same’s usual, and he said—What do you suppose
he said?”</p>
<p>“I have no idea,” confessed Ethel.</p>
<p>“That it would be the last one we’d get for many a
long day. Can that be so, Ethel? I don’t know
what we should do if our income from those shares
your great-uncle Diller left us should be cut off.”</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t worry, Mother,” Ethel said composedly.</p>
<p>Yet this was only one of the many things she began
to hear which suggested a coming catastrophe to the
Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIV<br>
<small>BENWAY’S DISCOVERY</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Benway Chase</span> was to prepare a copy of the faulty
specification sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company’s
order, to be attached to the report on that
unfortunate affair filed in the records of the board’s
proceedings.</p>
<p>Ethel had not discussed the unfortunate matter with
Benway, or with anybody else. That Frank Barton
could have allowed such an error—two such errors,
indeed—to escape his notice was scarcely in accord
with her belief in the general manager’s perspicacity.
Her lips merely tightened when anybody mentioned
the tragic happening within her hearing.</p>
<p>For it was indeed tragic. Rumors that the factory
output was falling behind and that the Hapwood-Diller
Company was facing a situation similar to that
which had threatened it when Frank Barton had first
taken hold as manager, reached Ethel’s ears from all
sides.</p>
<p>Although she could not understand how this mistake
in the Kimberly order could have happened,
she accepted the claim of the ordering company as
honestly made, and that without question. The
Kimberly Company was not a second Bogata concern.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>
They wanted the goods ordered and were
amply able to pay for them. The mistakes in the
specifications made much trouble for the purchasing
corporation as well as for the Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p>This schedule from the Kimberly Binding Company
had been copied in duplicate in the Hapwood-Diller
Company’s office, one copy with Frank Barton’s
name upon it being returned to the ordering
firm, the other filed where only properly accredited
members of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s office
force supposedly were able to get at it.</p>
<p>The question as to how the two items on the schedule
came to be different from those on the sheet sent
back to the Kimberly Company bulked just as big in
Ethel’s mind as the similar question regarding the
Bogata Company’s order. She felt that the same
treacherous hand was to be suspected.</p>
<p>It was not Frank Barton’s fault. Of this she was
confident. But she could not put an accusing finger
on any person. That there was a traitor in the Hapwood-Diller
office went without saying. This time
Mr. Barton was too far away for her to discuss the
point with him, and Hammerly gave her no opportunity
of speaking her mind.</p>
<p>Benway came with the copy he was making of the
faulty schedule and placed it before her. He was
transcribing the paper in his own very exact, upright
handwriting. But he had made a mistake.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>“Do you think that will be noticed, Ethel?” he
asked with a measure of suppressed excitement that
she did not at first notice. “See where I made a bull—and
used the acid to take the ink out?”</p>
<p>“Why, yes, Benway; I see it—now that you call
my attention to it. But really you have made the
correction very neatly. I think it will be all right.
The paper only shines a little on the surface where
you erased the ink marks with the acid.”</p>
<p>“That’s just it, Ethel,” he hissed, close to her ear.
“The erasing fluid leaves the surface of this sort of
paper glossy. Now look at this!”</p>
<p>He plumped the document he was copying—the
schedule in which the two errors had been found—under
her eye.</p>
<p>“Why, what is it?”</p>
<p>“See anything wrong about those two mysterious
lines?” he demanded, and now she marked his excitement.</p>
<p>“Oh, Benway! That’s been all gone over. You
can see there have been no changes made in this
original paper. There is no more shine to the surface
where those two errors stand than elsewhere.
<i>That</i> was taken up in board meeting. I heard them
discuss it. And I studied it myself. No. There
have surely been no erasures.”</p>
<p>“Sure?”</p>
<p>“You are very obstinate, Benway!” exclaimed
Ethel impatiently.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>“But look,” he whispered. “Here!” He snapped on
the electric light over her desk. “Look at those
places on the slant—with the glare of the light on
them. Don’t you see that the paper has been roughened
under those two faulty lines—and nowhere else
on the sheet? And see again! Under the electric
light the surface of the paper seems bluer at those
places than anywhere else. That is a good quality
of paper, too.”</p>
<p>“Is—isn’t it a chance discoloration?” murmured
the girl.</p>
<p>“Don’t you think that’s far-fetched?” demanded
Benway. “Two blue blots—and just where those
wrong items are written?”</p>
<p>“Could they have been caused by drops of water?”</p>
<p>“Huh! Drops of something!” growled Benway.
“I own to that belief. But never water. Here!
Use this reading glass. Don’t you see the raw fibre
of the paper? The surface has been scratched just
where those wrong items stand. Not by the sort of
erasing fluid we use in this office; but by some means.
What do you think?”</p>
<p>Ethel passed the sensitive tips of her fingers lightly
over the indicated spots on the sheet. It seemed to
her that she could feel the slight roughness of the
paper that Benway indicated so assuredly.</p>
<p>“You go back and finish your job, Benway,” she told
him finally. “Then bring me this original. Understand?
Say nothing to anybody else about it.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>“Sure!” he returned, his eyes snapping.</p>
<p>“Then if you are asked about it,” she added quietly,
“you may say that you gave me the paper and know
nothing at all about it.”</p>
<p>He looked at her with more seriousness.</p>
<p>“Say, are you figuring on getting into trouble
with——”</p>
<p>Ethel held up her hand. “You are not supposed
to figure on this at all. Just do as I say, Benway.”</p>
<p>“Oh! All right, Ma’am,” he said with a mocking
little smile and a twinkle in his eye.</p>
<p>Even he did not wholly understand the seriousness
of the discovery; but Ethel appreciated it fully.
When he brought the original sheet of specifications
back to her she hid it in her dress and at noon instead
of going to lunch she caught a southbound car and
rode to the Stone Bridge.</p>
<p>On either side of the creek there were docks and
warehouses; but Macon Hammerly’s general store
and row of storehouses for feed and grain and such
other things as he dealt in were beyond the bridge
and some distance along what was called the Creek
Road. The Creek Road debouched into the fanning
country that adjoined Mailsburg somewhat abruptly,
at the south end of the town.</p>
<p>Really, Mr. Hammerly was a country merchant,
always had been such, and always would be. He had
come into possession of his father’s store when he
was a young man, and it was said that his grandfather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>
had first engaged in business—the trading of
general merchandise for pelts and farm produce—on
this very spot. However, the Macon Hammerly
store and warehouses were well known over a large
area.</p>
<p>Being on the edge of the city the farming people
were likely to trade with him largely. And yet he
was not considered a “good fellow.” He was too
sharp and severe in his business methods.</p>
<p>To his docks the sluggishly moving canal-boats
came bringing grain and feed and coal and other merchandise
that he dealt in more largely. And he was
a wholesale dealer in many articles that other merchants
in Mailsburg sold at retail. For one thing,
his was the largest seed house in the county.</p>
<p>Ethel hurried over the arch of the Stone Bridge
and down the narrow, bricked walk across from the
head of the several docks and the doors of the warehouses
upon them. This was an old, old part of
the town; indeed, it had been known as Stone Bridge
once; but Mailsburg had grown out to it and had
all but enveloped it with new buildings and better
streets. Only down the Creek Road the land still
was checkered with open fields and patches of wood.</p>
<p>Before the weather-beaten building in which was
Macon Hammerly’s general store, was a wide, roofed
porch. Several bewhittled armchairs, just “wabbly”
enough to be comfortable, stood about upon the
platform. Sometimes these were filled with Hammerly’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>
ancient cronies—cynics of a former generation
who had been in this world so long that they
seemed to believe they knew better how to run it
than Omnipotence!</p>
<p>Mr. Hammerly was alone at one end of the porch.
This was egg-buying day, and as he dealt largely
in eggs—shipping quantities to the larger cities—the
old man usually looked after the buying while
his clerks packed the boxes inside.</p>
<p>Hammerly believed if a thing was worth doing
at all it was worth doing well. Likewise he believed
in that other old saw relative to a man’s doing anything
himself if he wanted to be sure it was done
right. He could not do everything of importance
about his store and warehouses; but he could—and
did—buy eggs.</p>
<p>He watched the farmers and their wives cannily
as they brought their baskets up to the platform.
He handled many of the eggs himself. It was his
inflexible rule to refuse all pullet eggs, and he had
always in his pocket a wooden curtain-pole ring of a
certain size. If an egg would slip through that, it
was discarded.</p>
<p>Ethel chanced to arrive at a moment when there
was a let-up in the activities of egg buying. The
grain dealer pushed up his spectacles with that
familiar gesture of his and grinned at the girl.</p>
<p>“You ain’t come away down here on no party
call, Ethel?” he said questioningly. “You know I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>
ain’t in the swagger set, and I don’t serve pink tea
here.”</p>
<p>“No, sir,” she said, smiling in spite of her serious
mood. “I know you are a perfect barbarian.”</p>
<p>The man chuckled, but said only:</p>
<p>“Heard from Frank Barton yet?”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, sir!”</p>
<p>“I got you beat, then,” he said, with twinkling eye.
“Not direct; but from Washington. Got a friend
there and he’s kept me posted. The troop ship
<i>Tecumseh</i> got over safely—as they all did, in fact.
Them German undersea boats seem to have been
too far under the sea to catch ’em. Frank’s safe in
France.”</p>
<p>“Until he gets into the trenches,” said the girl
bitterly.</p>
<p>“Don’t you be like these other folks, Ethel. Grouchers,
every one! Knocking the war, and looking on
the black side of every cloud instead of on the silver.
The good Lord knows I’m no optimist by nature; but
these are the times when every one of us should
stretch our cheerfulness to the breaking point.</p>
<p>“Frank’s going to be all right. He’s going to do
his duty, and he’s going through with it all and come
back to us. That’s my belief, Ethel.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Hammerly! I hope you are right.”</p>
<p>“If things go as smooth here with us as they do
over there with him,” he added, with twinkling eyes,
“I reckon all will be well.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” she exclaimed again, “things
are not going smoothly here. At least, not with
the Hapwood-Diller Company.”</p>
<p>“So that’s what brings you down here? I ain’t so
flattered as I was, Ethel,” he said good-naturedly.
“Let’s hear your trouble.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you mustn’t think I’m not glad to see you,”
she said, hurriedly.</p>
<p>“O’ course you’re glad,” he said, with something
of a grin on his wrinkled face. He stroked his chin
reflectively. “Great times these, an’ no mistake.
If I was only younger——”</p>
<p>“You’d get into the war, I suppose.”</p>
<p>“Certain sure, I would. An’ you would, too, if
you was a young man.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps—I really don’t know—it’s all so
horrible.”</p>
<p>“So ’tis, an’ that German Kaiser has got a pile
to answer for, believe me. But now to business.
Tell me what’s wrong.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure that it’s really wrong. But it looks
queer to me.”</p>
<p>“I see. Got some papers, eh?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“Let’s see ’em.”</p>
<p>She displayed the specification sheet and explained
hurriedly Benway’s discovery. The appearance of
erasure in two places on the document seemed plainer
to Ethel each time she looked at it.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>“I dunno,” drawled Hammerly, at first doubtful.
But the longer he looked at the two bluish marks
the more deeply he was impressed with the significance
of them. “Can it be that we’ve got him at last?”
he finally questioned vigorously.</p>
<p>“<i>Him?</i>” repeated Ethel, curiously.</p>
<p>“There’s a dirty traitor in this business, Ethel,”
declared the grain dealer.</p>
<p>“Who do you think it is? Jim Mayberry?” she
asked outright.</p>
<p>“He never did this,” declared Hammerly with
emphasis. “He wouldn’t have brains enough. That’s
scarcely seeable, that rubbing out. And see how
close the handwriting has been copied.</p>
<p>“I see. That is Josephine Durand’s work—the
original writing of the sheet, I mean. We never use
the typewriter on these specification papers, because
of the uneven ruling. She wrote both this and the
copy that went back to the Kimberly people with
Mr. Barton’s name on it.”</p>
<p>“I know,” growled Hammerly, still staring closely
at the paper.</p>
<p>“And Josephine is perfectly trustworthy, I am
sure. Besides, it does not seem possible that Mr.
Barton did not closely compare the two papers.
Those figures were changed, I am sure, after Mr.
Barton left.”</p>
<p>“Not a doubt on it! Not a doubt on it!” agreed
Hammerly. “I’ve seen something like this afore,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>
he added, more to himself than to the girl. “You let
me keep this paper, Ethel. We’ll see. How’s your
ma?”</p>
<p>“Worried a good deal, Mr. Hammerly. That lawyer
who came around to buy her shares in the Hapwood-Diller
Company really scared mother.”</p>
<p>“What lawyer?” snapped Macon Hammerly, instantly
interested.</p>
<p>Ethel told of the incident and gave Mr. Hammerly
the name and address of the attorney, Mr. Schuster.
“I believe he did secure a few shares from some of the
small stockholders,” Ethel said. “You know Abel
Rawlins had seven shares and Mrs. Henry Cutt a
dozen. They sold, mother says, and she is worried
for fear the company is going to smash and we may
lose everything.”</p>
<p>“How many’s she got, Ethel?” asked the old man,
a heavy frown on his brow. And when Ethel told
him, he added: “So? Israel Diller ought to’ve done
better by her than that. She was just as close’t
kin to the old man as Grandon Fuller’s wife.”</p>
<p>“Oh, we won’t talk about that,” said Ethel, with a
gesture of dismissal. “What is done, is done.”</p>
<p>“Humph! Mebbe! If it stays done!” grunted Macon
Hammerly. “But it’s been ten years and more now,
ain’t it? Well! Howsomever, you let me keep this
paper a spell and see if I can make anything out of it.
I want to compare it with something I saw once—an’
had suspicions about.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>He bought no more eggs personally that day—and
probably some of pullet size slipped by. Instead,
when Ethel left him, he walked up into the business
section of High Street and there, near the court-house,
went into the office of Alfred Gainor, who, as Mr.
Mestinger’s chief clerk, had fallen heir to most of
his clients and their business when the older attorney
died.</p>
<p>Mr. Mestinger had been the legal adviser of Israel
Diller and had drawn the latter’s will.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XV<br>
<small>FROM “OVER THERE”</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Ethel Clayton</span> went away from her interview
with Macon Hammerly cheered upon one particular
point at least. His outlook upon the chance for
Frank Barton’s continued safety, even if he was in
France, was helpful. And she knew the old grain
merchant had Barton’s well-being at heart.</p>
<p>Crabbed as he was with most people, Macon Hammerly
had always betrayed his interest in the general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company
and his regard for him. He sometimes said,
in his rough way, that he kept Frank’s welfare in
mind because the young fellow did not know enough
to look out for himself. Ethel knew, however, that
Hammerly had not been speaking carelessly about
the absent Barton.</p>
<p>The latter was over the sea in safety, and the girl
was devoutly thankful for it. Indeed she added
that thanksgiving to her prayers before retiring. But
she longed to hear personally from Barton. She had
already written him three letters since she had last
seen him, all addressed as he had told her; but they
had brought no replies.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>As before, while he was in the training camp, her
letters were mostly regarding office incidents which
she knew he would be interested in. But she had
said nothing about the threatened trouble and loss
to the company through the mistake in the Kimberly
Binding Company order. Let somebody else
tell the absent soldier that misfortune. Ethel was
determined to put nothing in her letters that was
not cheerful.</p>
<p>She learned very quickly, as thousands of other
people were learning just at that time, how particularly
hard it is to write cheerfully to the men at war.
The very fact of sitting down to write to a soldier on
active duty calls up before the mind a picture too
terrible to be ignored.</p>
<p>How do we know the letter will ever reach the one
addressed? What peril may he not face before our
written words reach France and be delivered to him?</p>
<p>In Ethel Clayton’s case, too, the pang of jealousy
was not lacking. She realized that her feeling for
Frank Barton was not reciprocated. He had never
given her the least cause to believe that he had other
than the merest feeling of comradeship for her.
Whereas it was plain that for Grandon Fuller’s
daughter he experienced a much deeper regard.
Nevertheless Ethel was jealous of Helen Fuller.</p>
<p>Mrs. Clayton thought her daughter was working
too hard, and that business worries depressed her.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>
Benway Chase, too, noted her wan look and increasing
pallor.</p>
<p>“You’re overdoing it, Ethel,” he said one bleak
evening when they were walking home together.</p>
<p>“Overdoing <i>what</i>?” and her tone of voice admonished
him that she did not welcome his interference.
Yet he persevered:</p>
<p>“You needn’t get mad. You shoulder too much
responsibility—and for that oaf, Jim Mayberry.
Let him do some of his own work.”</p>
<p>She became gentler at once. Ben did not suspect
why she so willingly took upon herself the extra tasks.
It was for the absent Barton that she worked so
hard, not for the manager <i>pro tem</i>. If he was spared
to come back to Mailsburg and the Hapwood-Diller
Company, Ethel was going to do all she could to
hold his job for him!</p>
<p>“Somebody must do these things, Benway,” she
said quietly. “I am in a responsible position. From
the very fact I am a woman, more is expected of me
if I would hold up my end of the work and satisfy
everybody. And if I do not look after the tags of
work in the office, who will?”</p>
<p>“‘Tags of work!’” quoted Benway with emphatic
disgust. “If <i>that</i> were only it! Oh, Ethel! I wish I
could do it for you.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Benway.”</p>
<p>“And you won’t even let me help,” he complained.
“You don’t even talk to me about your troubles.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>
Why Ethel! I seem even less your friend now that I
am in the office with you than I used to be.”</p>
<p>“Goodness, Benway!” she exclaimed with renewed
impatience, “you can’t expect to take my personal
troubles or my work on your shoulders.”</p>
<p>“Why not?” he demanded tenderly. “You know
it’s what I’d love to do. Oh, I wish I had a million
and could take you out of all this! That’s what I
wish, Ethel.”</p>
<p>“Why, I don’t want to give up my work, Benway.
Nor do I want to be rich. At least, I never have
thought of being wealthy. And a million——”</p>
<p>“Well, I’d get along with even less,” he admitted
drolly. “All I really long for is a loaf, a jug of wine,
a flivver, and thou.”</p>
<p>“My dear boy,” she declared briskly, “you’ll get
your first three wishes much easier than you will
your fourth. Leave me out of the category, please.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to go off in a flivver with any man
and a loaf of bread and a wine jug. I am wedded
to my work. I love it. It’s just as much my life
as it is yours. I have never looked upon my work
as a mere stop-gap between high school or college
and the wedded state—as is so often the case with
girls. <i>This is my job</i>, and I have no right to expect
you, or anybody else, Benway, to ease it for me.”</p>
<p>He looked at her aggrieved. “Is it always going
to be so, Ethel?”</p>
<p>“I expect it will be always so,” she returned with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>
less vehemence. “I am not a marrying girl, Bennie.
I wish you’d get that into your handsome head. Get
interested in some other girl—do!”</p>
<p>“Pshaw! Who told you you were not a marrying
girl?” he demanded, chuckling. “Wait till the right
knock comes on the door.”</p>
<p>“I shan’t hear it. I shall be too busy.”</p>
<p>He was more serious for a moment.</p>
<p>“Perhaps there is danger of that. I’ve been knocking
myself ever since I can remember, and I get
mighty little response.”</p>
<p>“Don’t waste your time, Bennie,” she said bruskly.
“I tell you frankly: Marriage is the last thing I expect
to accomplish.”</p>
<p>“You’re wrong. It’s death that is the last thing
for us all. But you can’t break down my hopes,
Ethel. I shall continue to knock.”</p>
<p>Somehow this insistence of Benway’s irritated Ethel
more than usual. She was almost sorry she had ever
urged Mr. Barton to take him into the offices, for
the young fellow too plainly betrayed his interest
in her.</p>
<p>It was bad enough for Sydney and the others to
note the fact that Benway was always ready to run
her errands or otherwise be at her beck and call; but
Jim Mayberry made his uncouth comments upon it
too.</p>
<p>“You have him trained like a little curly dog,
haven’t you?” the superintendent sneered one day,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>
when Benway had anticipated some need of Ethel’s.
“He fetches and carries better than a retriever. Is
he good for anything else?”</p>
<p>“You had better ask Sydney if he does his work
if you are afflicted with blindness yourself, Mr. Mayberry,”
she said tartly.</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m not too blind to see there are a good many
things going dead wrong in this office,” Mayberry
growled. “But I’m not having my way here. We
are under petticoat rule, it seems.”</p>
<p>Such hints as this had previously warned Ethel
to keep still. Being unable to have his way with her,
Jim Mayberry would be glad to find cause for bringing
her before the Board of Directors for dismissal.
She felt all the time that if he ever did have the backing
of the Board members he would make quick
changes in the office.</p>
<p>She knew herself to be in an uncertain situation.
Really, she would have done better for her future
perhaps if she had looked about for another position.
Her record with the Hapwood-Diller Company, if
she left of her own volition, would obtain her work
elsewhere.</p>
<p>But she could not do this. Tacitly she had promised
to remain “on the job.” Barton expected it of
her. He had frankly said he felt secure in leaving the
company and going away because she would be there.
She was “the girl he left behind.” He depended
upon her to keep things straight. And perhaps,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>
more than Frank Barton suspected, it was Ethel
who could hold his position for him until he returned
from France.</p>
<p>If he ever did return! This thought scarified her
mind continually. It seemed just as though every
German gun and every German bayonet were pointed
straight at the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. How could he escape with his life?</p>
<p>And then the letter came—the letter she had longed
for. When John tumbled it out of his bag upon
her desk with the others, Ethel could not suppress
a little scream, for she saw it first of all. Little Skinner
and Josephine heard her and came running.</p>
<p>“What is it, Ethel?” demanded the latter.</p>
<p>“It’s a mouse, I bet!” said Skinner. “Some o’
them boys been playing a joke on you, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>“Why, is it only a letter?” queried the other
stenographer. “How you startled me.”</p>
<p>“It’s enough to startle anybody,” declared Ethel,
making the best of a bad matter. “It’s from Mr.
Barton.”</p>
<p>At that announcement even Sydney left his desk
to draw near. Ethel’s heart beat a warm alarm,
but she could not get out of opening and reading the
missive there and then. Of course he would say
nothing in it that the office force could not safely
hear. She knew it would be merely a kindly message
for all. She wished—oh, how deeply!—that it might<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>
be of so intimate a nature that she could not read it
aloud to them.</p>
<p>He was within sound of the guns at the Front
already. No locality was particularized, for that
would have been censored, but if he could hear the
heavy cannonade from his training camp it would
not be long before his battalion would be marching
into the trenches.</p>
<p>No fear for the future was breathed through Barton’s
chatty, friendly letter. He gave such a picture
of the camp, and the boys in khaki, and the
people about them, that even Sydney—his face working
spasmodically—clenched his fist and muttered:</p>
<p>“By heaven! how I wish I was over there with
him.”</p>
<p>Benway’s eyes shone, too; and Mabel Skinner expressed
for the hundredth time the desire she had to
be a boy.</p>
<p>“Why, I tell Boots that if I was him I’d run away
and swear I was nineteen and enlist.”</p>
<p>“It’s tough on you, Skinner,” drawled Jim Mayberry,
who chanced to be passing through and heard
this outbreak. “Nothing but a pair of trousers between
you and glory.”</p>
<p>Little Skinner remembered that it was in office
hours, so she made no retort. Otherwise Mayberry
would never have got away with it, as she declared
afterward.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>However, she was really trying to eschew rudeness,
especially within the hearing of Benway Chase.
Once or twice, as Ethel would not let him hang
around for her after hours, Benway had walked along
with Mabel. The girl had been delighted by these
attentions. She began to dress more quietly and
gradually the startled expression left her face, for
she learned to arrange her hair more tastefully. Her
improvement was marked enough for others besides
Ethel to notice it.</p>
<p>“By jove!” ejaculated Sydney, “our Skinner is
coming into her own. She looks more like a girl
should and less like a boy dressed up in girl’s togs.”</p>
<p>It was only Ethel, however, who suspected why
Mabel was changing both in manner and in appearance.
That the girl worshiped Benway Chase from
afar Ethel did not doubt; but at first she was not sure
that she approved. Little Skinner came from such
a very poor and “shiftless” family. Should Benway
look on Mabel with favor, Ethel feared that his mother
would be horror-stricken. Yet Ethel had told Benway
she would be glad to see him interested in some
other girl.</p>
<p>If Barton’s letter did not cheer Ethel in large measure
it linked her more closely to the war and its activities.
Hard as she had to work in the offices, she
found time to be active in the local Red Cross chapter
to which she belonged.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>She insisted, too, in buying several of the second
issue of Liberty Bonds, although Mrs. Clayton was
not in favor of her so doing.</p>
<p>“We have all the stocks and bonds and such things
we can afford,” the troubled woman declared. “If
the Hapwood-Diller stock is going downhill (and they
tell me the Board will really pass the next dividend)
we’ll have to dig right into our little bank account,
or else live as poor as church mice.”</p>
<p>“Oh, it’s not as bad as that, Mother,” the girl
declared. “I have a steady income, you must remember—and
that’s a good deal.”</p>
<p>“Yes, but not as much as it ought to be. I declare,
in these times, with prices of everything going
up, wages should be about doubled.”</p>
<p>“If we doubled on the wages, we’d have to close
down.”</p>
<p>“But you didn’t have to take more bonds.”</p>
<p>“I thought it was our patriotic duty to do that.”</p>
<p>“Let them do it that have more than we have,
Ethel.”</p>
<p>“I think everybody ought to do all he or she can.”</p>
<p>“Well, maybe. But it’s hard on poor folks. And
there’s another thing,” added Mrs. Clayton suddenly.</p>
<p>“What is that?”</p>
<p>“I never did see such times! I couldn’t get sugar
at all to-day; though that trouble’s ’most over, they
say. And if we didn’t have coal in our cellar we’d<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
go without a fire, I guess. You’d better hang on to
what money you’ve got, Ethel.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to know who’s been talking to you again
about the company being in difficulties!” her daughter
said sharply. “It’s not so.”</p>
<p>“They tell me the shares are selling as low as
seventy-five in Boston. Flory Diller’s all of a twitter
about selling. She wants to buy a piano player,
anyway; and if she sells her shares the money will
belong to her and never mind what John says, she’ll
have that player.”</p>
<p>“It is such foolish people as Flory that make all
the trouble,” grumbled Ethel. “I wish you would
not listen to them, Mother.”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVI<br>
<small>THE CLOUDS THICKEN</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">News</span> of the first raid against American troops in
the trenches appeared in the newspapers. There
were but three deaths and a few captured and missing;
but the fact that a part of the American contingent
had been really in action could not fail to
fire the imagination and swell patriotic hearts on
this side of the ocean.</p>
<p>But to Ethel, when she read, the three stark bodies
laid to rest on November the fourth in a little French
village far back of the lines loomed a more important
thing than all else. To her troubled mind it was
only pitiful—not great—that a French general should,
standing at salute beside those graves, say: “In the
name of France, I thank you. God receive your
souls. Farewell!” Nor did it bring aught but tears
to her eyes to read the translation of the inscription
put at the foot of these graves:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>“Here lie the first soldiers of the great Republic
of the United States who died on the soil of France
for Justice and Liberty, November 3, 1917.”</p>
</div>
<p>No. She could not yet feel the exaltation of spirit
that had seized Frank Barton and thousands of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>
others in these early months of the war. She had
begun to feel her duty toward it, but she deplored
the fact of war and could not yet believe in the necessity
for it.</p>
<p>It was all a horrid nightmare. The shocking fact
that men were being shot down, killed or maimed,
still usurped all other thought regarding it in her
mind. Even Frank Barton’s letter, in which he pictured
the conditions in France and something of
what he had already seen of the effect of the German
invasion, inspired Ethel with nothing but fear for
his safety.</p>
<p>He should be back in Mailsburg and at his desk
in the Hapwood-Diller Company offices. That is
the way she saw it. And especially now, for Ethel
felt that there was some underhand work going on
that she could not fathom.</p>
<p>Since taking the Kimberly Binding Company schedule
to Mr. Hammerly she had heard nothing from
the grain merchant. Nor had she seen him. But
Mr. Grandon Fuller came to confer with Jim Mayberry
one day, and when the latter sent out for Ethel
to come into the private office the girl intuitively
knew that immediate trouble was brewing.</p>
<p>But she entered the room with perfect composure.
Fuller, lounging in his chair, looked at her with
heavily lidded eyes. He left the talking at first to
Mayberry, and the latter was brusk indeed.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>“Where’s that specification sheet of the Kimberly
order, Ethel?”</p>
<p>“There is a copy of it attached to the report made
for the Board, Mr. Mayberry,” she said quietly.</p>
<p>“I want the original. I can’t find it on file,”
snapped Mayberry.</p>
<p>“I do not know where it is,” she told him quite
promptly.</p>
<p>“What! You don’t know whether it is in the office
or not?”</p>
<p>“It is not in the office at present. Where it is I
do not know. But the copy is exact. Isn’t that
sufficient?”</p>
<p>“You know well enough it isn’t what I want,” said
the superintendent roughly. “You are taking too
much upon yourself, Ethel. You gave that paper
to Hammerly.”</p>
<p>“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Let me tell you that he isn’t manager here——”</p>
<p>“Nor are you, Mr. Mayberry. I prefer not to be
spoken to in this manner. I saw no reason to
refuse Mr. Hammerly permission to examine the
paper. If Mr. Fuller had asked for it I should have
considered it quite proper to hand it to him.”</p>
<p>She knew well enough by the expression upon the
stockholder’s countenance that she had hit the bull’s-eye.
But Mayberry, red-faced and blustering, declared:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>“You usurp too much power here, Ethel. It has
annoyed me before. I may not be manager in name;
but if I can’t be boss of the works without a girl’s
interference, I’ll throw up the job entirely.”</p>
<p>“No! Don’t say that, Mayberry!” interposed Fuller
significantly. “Wait until the Board meets again.
We will see then.”</p>
<p>“You get that paper—get it at once!” ordered Mayberry
in his very ugliest tone. “And don’t let another
private paper of this company go out of the
office—do you hear?”</p>
<p>“I am not deaf, Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly.
“You need not roar at me.”</p>
<p>“Who are you working for, young woman?” Grandon
Fuller asked, but in a moderate voice. “The
Hapwood-Diller Company, or Macon Hammerly?”</p>
<p>“<i>I</i> am working for the company,” she said with
significance.</p>
<p>“You will not be for long,” growled Mayberry.
“Get that schedule back from old Hammerly——”</p>
<p>“You will have to ask him for it, Mr. Mayberry,”
she said. “If that is all you called me in for, I have
plenty to do outside,” and she walked out of the private
office.</p>
<p>Ethel was quite sure that she could make herself
no more disliked than she was already by both the
superintendent and the principal stockholder. But
whatever came of the incident she proposed to keep<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>
her self-respect. She would not allow any one to
bully her.</p>
<p>It was open war now, however, between Jim Mayberry
and herself. When Mr. Fuller had gone the
angry superintendent strode out to her desk. He took
no pains to smother his rage or his voice when he
spoke to her.</p>
<p>“You’ll learn mighty soon, Ethel, that Frank
Barton has lost his influence in this concern—and
there’ll be no come back, either. He’s gone for good,
whether the fool dodges a bullet or a bit of shrapnel
or not. He’s through here.</p>
<p>“And so you will be, and that very soon, if you
don’t take a different tone here. I may lack power
to discharge you right now, but I shan’t lack that
power long. Then we’ll have a house cleaning,”
and he glared over the office as though he felt the
enmity of Ethel’s desk-mates.</p>
<p>“Going to clean up for fair, are you, Jim?” asked
Sydney, who felt secure in his position, for he had
been bookkeeper for the Hapwood-Diller Company
when the present superintendent was merely a boy
in one of the shops. “You’ll have your hands full if
you intend to run both the offices and the shops,
won’t you?”</p>
<p>“I’ll show you as well as this blame girl——”</p>
<p>Benway Chase slipped down from his stool and
started toward the superintendent. Ethel stood up,
her own hands clenched and her eyes aflame.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>“As long as I <i>am</i> at work here, Mr. Mayberry, I
refuse to be insulted and browbeaten by you. If
you have any instructions for me, let me hear them.
I don’t wish to hear anything else.”</p>
<p>Mayberry stamped out of the room. Mabel Skinner
gave three cheers under her breath.</p>
<p>“Oh, Miss Clayton! Ain’t you lovely! I’d have
slapped his face!” she added in approval.</p>
<p>This brought a laugh, and the office quickly simmered
down. But Ethel knew the matter was not
ended. She could not help feeling worried about
the future. If Jim Mayberry had his way she would
soon be out of a situation.</p>
<p>Then at home her mother was forever talking about
the decreasing value of the Hapwood-Diller shares.
She heard of other friends selling out their stock at
low prices.</p>
<p>She set her lips more firmly and refused to believe
that disaster threatened the concern that Frank Barton
had all but sweated blood to put on a paying
basis. Yet there were signs enough that affairs were
not as they should be. There were little breakdowns
in the machinery that never happened before. One
shop was closed for two days and the work fell behind
thereby. The profit was sliced completely from one
job, she knew, because of these handicaps.</p>
<p>And she was helpless to avert these crippling accidents,
nor could she point out who was at fault.
Certainly there was no happening wherein she could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>
honestly accuse Mayberry of guiltiness, no matter
how much she may have believed him to be at the
bottom of the trouble.</p>
<p>He had a good and valid excuse to offer the Board
of Directors when that body should investigate these
petty affairs. Naturally he could not give his attention
so closely to the workmen as before. The foremen
ran their several departments more to suit themselves
than when Mayberry did not have to do two
men’s work. It began to be remarked by high and
low alike that Jim Mayberry could not be expected
to be both superintendent and manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company!</p>
<p>And these whispers pointed to but one thing: The
appointment of another superintendent and the establishment
of Mayberry in Frank Barton’s place. The
situation grew more and more difficult.</p>
<p>The possible end of these things troubled Ethel
daily and hourly. Not so much that she feared
losing her own position. That would be sad, but
not a catastrophe.</p>
<p>Her main thought was for the future of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. There was a conspiracy
against the concern. Who fathered the traitorous
design, and the object of it, she did not know. Jim
Mayberry might be only a tool, for, with Macon
Hammerly, Ethel considered the superintendent a
weakling after all.</p>
<p>She doubted and feared Grandon Fuller. Yet he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
was the largest stockholder in the concern—or his
wife was, and he managed his wife’s affairs. Surely it
could not be pleasing to him to see the shares of the
company falling in the open market.</p>
<p>These matters were really outside of Ethel Clayton’s
province. Yet they would have been vitally
troubling to Frank Barton were he at home and in
charge of affairs. And Ethel felt herself to be on
watch for him.</p>
<p>If she might only confer with him! If she could
tell him her suspicions and reveal to him her worry
over the Hapwood-Diller Company! This longing
obsessed her.</p>
<p>Arriving at home one evening rather early she saw,
before reaching the gate, a stranger leaving the premises.
He was a small, black-haired man who walked
briskly away from the Clayton cottage. Her mother
met her at the door.</p>
<p>“He’s been here again, Ethel!” she exclaimed
tragically when her daughter ran up the steps.</p>
<p>“Who has been here?”</p>
<p>“That Schuster. The lawyer who wants to buy
our shares of stock. But he won’t give us but sixty
now. My dear! I am afraid something dreadful is
going to happen.”</p>
<p>“There’s something going to happen to him!” ejaculated
the girl with emphasis. “Is that he yonder—that
little runt?”</p>
<p>“Yes. And he said—”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>But Ethel was down the steps and out of the gate
without listening to further particulars. She saw
the man turn the corner and walk quickly toward
the car line. There was a path across the open fields
past Benway Chase’s house that brought one more
quickly to the car tracks. Ethel went this way.</p>
<p>“It’s the only thing to do,” she told herself. “The
only thing to do.”</p>
<p>She was much disturbed in mind, and her course
of action was by no means exactly clear to her, just
yet. But she was doing some quick thinking.</p>
<p>Ordinarily she would not have minded had she
met Benway, but now she did not want to stop to
talk, and so watched her chance to slip past the
house unobserved.</p>
<p>“Perhaps he’d try to help me, but I guess I don’t
want his assistance,” she reasoned.</p>
<p>She almost ran the distance. While yet some rods
from the car line, she saw a car bowling along but
a short block away. She waved her hand frantically.</p>
<p>The motorman was not looking her way, and
consequently did not see her. Then she called to
him, and he braked up in a hurry.</p>
<p>“Always willing to accommodate the ladies,” he
remarked with a grin.</p>
<p>She was already aboard the car, therefore, when
the lawyer swung himself up on the step and entered.
There were several passengers and he gave nobody<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>
more than a cursory glance. Therefore (and Ethel
was glad of the fact) he did not know her or suspect
her identity.</p>
<p>There was a scheme afoot either to ruin the Hapwood-Diller
Company, or, more probably, to “freeze
out” the smaller stockholders. Of this the girl was
confident. She believed A. Schuster was doing the
secret work for the plotters, and it might be that, if
she trailed him, she could learn just who it was who
was at the bottom of this dastardly conspiracy.</p>
<p>If Frank Barton were here, and possessed her knowledge
of affairs and her suspicions, would he not do
the same? She believed so, and she believed the
situation called her to the task.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVII<br>
<small>A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">At</span> just this point in Ethel Clayton’s business
troubles, when she wished so heartily that she could
have the benefit of Barton’s advice, the general manager
of the Hapwood-Diller Company was thinking
very little indeed of such tame affairs as those relating
to the factory in Mailsburg.</p>
<p>Like those other thousands who have a rendezvous
with death on the battleline, the intensive training
and preparation for that event was filling his whole
thought, as well as taking up all his time. The regiment
to which Frank Barton was attached had
plunged immediately into such grilling work as many
of the men had never in their lives experienced.</p>
<p>In the first place, Barton’s detachment was billeted
in a little village which had before that day on which
the American soldiery marched in, escaped all contact
with the Yankees, or, indeed, any one outside
its local confines. It was but a tiny collection of
farm cottages and stables builded together far back
in feudal times for protective reasons. Sanitation
was an unknown word to the inhabitants.</p>
<p>Barton’s captain was taken down with pleuropneumonia
almost at his landing from the troop ship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>
<i>Tecumseh</i>, and was in a hospital. Barton as ranking
lieutenant was in charge of the company of nearly two
hundred men. With the medical major he had the
well-being, both mental and physical, of these men
upon his hands. It was a situation of responsibility.</p>
<p>His second in command appeared before him on
the first morning, saluted, and said:</p>
<p>“Lieutenant Barton, I have to report, sir, that this
place—er—really, Lieutenant, <i>it stinks</i>.”</p>
<p>“So my nose tells me, Lieutenant Copley. The
doctor likewise agrees with us.”</p>
<p>“Bah jove!” groaned Morrison Copley, who could
not altogether cast his drawl on such sort notice.
“What is to be done about it?”</p>
<p>“Clean up!” announced Barton vigorously.</p>
<p>And that was their first job. Precious piles of
stable scrapings that had occupied the little courtyards
before the farmers’ cots, or had been heaped
in stable penthouses since time immemorial, were
forked into carts and spread upon the fallow ground
outside the village.</p>
<p>It was a shock to the villagers, and at first they
raised a great clamor, for custom was being vastly
disturbed. But when they were made to see that the
mules and horses of the American forces were adding
daily to the fertilizer piles and that the Yankee boys
in removing the manure to the fields were doing the
farmers’ work, and that for nothing, objections died
among the French population of the village, if not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>
entirely among the soldiers themselves. But they
made that village clean and kept it clean.</p>
<p>Once Frank Barton burst out laughing and had to
retreat to his quarters to recover. The thought had
struck him suddenly that if Madam Copley—the
haughty, somewhat snobbish Madam Copley—could
see her son bossing a gang forking over steaming
manure piles, she would probably swoon.</p>
<p>It was rather startling, too, when one considered
what a metamorphosis had come over Morry Copley.
Even his voice had changed. Its shrillness had been
modified and when he gave an order now it was with
the snap of a whiplash in his tone.</p>
<p>Morry was diplomatic, too. In the cleaning up of
the village this ranked high, for he managed such
French as he possessed most adroitly and made the
peasants who first thought they were being robbed
agree with him that it might be a good thing, once in
a hundred years, to scrape the manure platforms—and
even the cobbled village street—right down to
the bone.</p>
<p>From that first week of occupancy, when effectual
sanitary measures were put into practice, right
through the long season of trench training that followed,
Barton and his detachment were never idle
enough to suffer from homesickness.</p>
<p>Although the training field and trenches for this
American division were near enough to the battlefront
for the big guns to be heard, they were well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
hidden, and were defended from the enemy aircraft
by a special squadron of French flying machines and
sentinel airplanes.</p>
<p>The plan of the German military leaders to bring
some great disaster upon the first American troops
to arrive back of the battlelines, was not yet accomplished.
That the attempt would be made again and
again until the catastrophe was assured was well
understood by the Americans as well as by the allied
training officers working with the division.</p>
<p>“The Boche will get you if you don’t watch out,”
became a byword in the Yankee camps. Perhaps the
frequent cry of “wolf! wolf!” made the Americans
at last somewhat careless. Men who have always
joked about the lack of intelligence of German saloon-keepers
and delicatessen shopmen are not likely to
be easily impressed by stories of Fritz’s super-powers
under the sea, on the earth, or in the air.</p>
<p>Working with his men all day and studying at
night made up the round of Barton’s existence during
these first weeks in France. It was not often
he gave much attention to outside matters, or thought
upon anything but military tactics.</p>
<p>It was true there was a desire in the back of his
mind at first to learn how Helen Fuller was and where
she was stationed in France—if she really had come
over. He wrote a friendly note to her addressed
in care of the Red Cross headquarters in Paris, but
received no reply.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>Then arrived Ethel’s first three letters, all in one
mail. The picture in them of Mailsburg and the
affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company,
pleased Barton greatly. He had not realized
before how hungry he was for news.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry seemed to have forgotten him
altogether. He was not so dense that he did not
understand Mayberry’s character in a measure. Barton
had never expected gratitude from the boyhood
friend he had made superintendent of the factory.
Ethel’s letters, however, hinted at none of the trouble
Mayberry was making in Barton’s absence.</p>
<p>They were just cheerful narratives of the daily
happenings that she knew would interest the absent
manager. He had already written one general missive
addressed to her; but now he sat down and replied
particularly to Ethel Clayton—a warm and
friendly letter inspired by a feeling that he had not
before realized he held for the girl whom he had always
considered so “capable.”</p>
<p>He remembered how she had looked at him from
her desk on the evening of his final departure from
Mailsburg. Actually he had never forgotten this
picture of the girl he had left behind to watch over
the affairs of the concern he had done so much for
and which had meant so much to him. She seemed
to mean a deal more in his thought, too, than merely
a capable office assistant.</p>
<p>And she was a pretty girl. That Sunday she had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
visited the camp at Lake Quehasset! There was no
girl he knew who could look more attractive. Why
had he never noticed it before that day? Hers
was a less glowing, a less striking beauty than Helen
Fuller’s, but it was a beauty that once noted never
lost its attraction for the appreciative eye.</p>
<p>The lonely man in camp or barracks is sure to contemplate
the memory of his friends and acquaintances
among womankind, and Barton’s mind dwelt
as never before on the girls and women he knew in
Mailsburg.</p>
<p>“Why,” he thought, as he closed the long letter
to Ethel, “I might have tried to make a friend of her.
I wonder why I did not try? Miss Clayton is very
much worth while.”</p>
<p>The wound caused by Helen Fuller’s treatment of
him at the last, was still raw. He felt that she had
deliberately cultivated his acquaintance, had made
him believe she had more than a passing interest in
him, only to make the fall of his hopes seem the
greater.</p>
<p>He wondered if Helen had really had for him exactly
the same feeling that she had for Morrison Copley
or Charlie Bradley. Was she merely a coquette,
playing with men as a fisherman plays a trout—and
for the same reason? Was it merely for sport that
she had exerted herself to charm him?</p>
<p>Frank Barton felt all the hurt that a man of his
kind does when he awakes to the fact that he has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>
been made a fool of by a guileful woman. But he
did not feel that pique which often turns a man
from one woman to accept the salve of another’s
sympathy. In thinking of Ethel Clayton and writing
to her he had no such thought as this in mind.</p>
<p>No. Instead he threw himself with all his strength
into his work. He was acting ranking officer of his
company, and he felt all the responsibility which that
implies. He desired to have his boys show at inspection
a higher degree of training than any other company
in the regiment. He kept his brother officers,
as well as the non-commissioned officers, up to the
scratch by both example and precept.</p>
<p>“Barton’s a shark for work,” they all said. “He
just eats it up!”</p>
<p>The notice of staff officers was drawn to his command
and it brought Lieutenant Barton some special
attentions. He was taken with a group of other
advanced officers to the front line trenches and there
learned much of the actual work of modern warfare—much
that would help him when his brave boys “went
in.”</p>
<p>And then, back with his detachment once more,
the men of which were “fit as a fiddle” and ready for
any work, Frank Barton saw that day for which he
had been preparing all these long weeks and months.</p>
<p>It did not come just as he expected. He and his
men were not moved to some sector of the front where
they would slip into the places of wearied and mud-encrusted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>
poilus at night. They did not go to the
Hun in fact; the Hun came to them.</p>
<p>The day began early indeed for Lieutenant Barton.
He was up long before reveille, for there was a line
of motor-lorries stalled in the mud just outside the
village, that had been there half the night. Barton’s
company was called on for help.</p>
<p>For several days there had been a thaw and each
night a thick and penetrating fog arose from the saturated
earth, wiping out the stars completely and
hanging a thick pall over the countryside.</p>
<p>Under the oversight of the non-commissioned
officers, the men began building miniature corduroy
roads over the miry spots, and prying the lorries’
wheels out of the mud so that they could get a start,
one by one, and go on through the village street.</p>
<p>Barton strode along the line of stalled trucks and
their trailers to the very last one in the procession.
Beyond, the forelights of a smaller motor-car showed
in the mist. In curiosity he drew near to this.</p>
<p>“Any chance of getting by the jam, Lieutenant?”
demanded an unmistakably American voice.</p>
<p>“Not, now,” Barton responded, drawing nearer.
“You will have to wait for those trucks to get through
the town.”</p>
<p>“And how long will that be?”</p>
<p>“I cannot say. By the way, perhaps you had
better let me see your passes. Save time. I happen
to be in command here.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>“Oh, sure! Here you are, Lieutenant.”</p>
<p>The driver of the car stepped out, pulling several
papers from an inner pocket as he did so. Barton
flashed the spotlight of his torch on them. At the
same moment a clear and well remembered voice
spoke from the tonneau:</p>
<p>“Why, it’s Frank Barton! How very odd!”</p>
<p>“Miss Fuller! Helen!” ejaculated the officer in
equal amazement.</p>
<p>He turned his flashlight upon the occupants of the
car. Two women in nurse’s cloaks and an elderly
French citizen were Helen’s companions. She, too,
was garbed as a Red Cross nurse.</p>
<p>“Oh, we shall be all right now!” the American girl
cried.</p>
<p>She explained to her companions in French, but
spoke so rapidly that Barton could not follow her
observations. The chauffeur, a keen-faced American
lad, evidently college-bred, chuckled and returned
the papers to his pocket.</p>
<p>“You see, Mr. Barton,” she said to the lieutenant,
“we are going to the base hospital on ahead—these
ladies and I. Monsieur Renau goes to the village
there on business. I engaged Johnny Gear and his
machine to take us around this way because the railroad
accommodations for civilians, as you know, are
dreadful. And here you find us stuck in the mud,”
she concluded dramatically.</p>
<p>“I fear you will be stuck in the mud more than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>
once if you follow this lorry train,” Barton said.
“It has right of way and will leave an almost impassable
mire behind it.”</p>
<p>“Now you’ve said something, Lieutenant,” agreed
Johnny Gear.</p>
<p>“But you can get us around it, of course, Frank,”
said Helen confidently, and in the tone of an American
girl to whom nothing is impossible if she has once
made up her mind to get it.</p>
<p>“Not by any near road, Miss Helen,” he responded.</p>
<p>“Why! <i>there</i> is a track,” the girl cried, for through
a sudden rift in the fog she could see a few yards.
“Doesn’t that go around this village you say is just
ahead of us?”</p>
<p>“It leads into our training encampment. Nobody
is allowed there without special permit.”</p>
<p>“Oh, now, <i>Frank</i>——”</p>
<p>“But there is a road,” he hastened to add. “You
must turn back. Half a mile back you will find a
road that encircles the whole field, and on which you
will not be challenged. I’ll go with you if you can
back and turn your car.”</p>
<p>“You bet I can,” agreed Gear. “Look out for the
mud, Lieutenant.”</p>
<p>“Come and sit beside me, Frank,” the American
girl said, quickly opening the tonneau door on her
side. “How are you—and the other Mailsburg
heroes? I’ve just lots and <i>lots</i> to tell you!”</p>
<p>He slipped into the seat indicated and was introduced—after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>
a fashion—to the French girls and to
Monsieur Renau. Gear got his car turned about and
they went lubbering on over the heavy road.</p>
<p>It was daybreak now but still very dark, with the
world completely smothered in fog. Almost by
chance Barton discovered the entrance to the encircling
track he had spoken of. It was a twenty-mile
trip around the training field; but if he continued
with them he was sure the party would make
it all right.</p>
<p>“And you <i>must</i> see that we get through, Frank,”
Helen Fuller urged. “Really, you know, we’ve <i>got</i>
to get to our destination to-day.”</p>
<p>Barton smiled at her reassuringly. Her eyes were
as bright as ever, her smile as alluring. He quite
forgot how cavalierly she had treated him at their
last meeting in Mailsburg.</p>
<p>“Drive right ahead, Mr. Gear,” he told the chauffeur.
“There is almost no heavy trucking over this
road, and I think you will be able to get ahead of the
lorry train.”</p>
<p>Then he gave his attention to the girl beside him.
She chattered in her usual magpie fashion; yet Barton
loved to hear her. Naturally of a serious trend
himself, Helen Fuller’s inconsequential talk had always
amused him. And much that she told him
now about her experience since coming to France
was interesting.</p>
<p>That she was quite as sure as ever that her interests<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>
and her activities were of more importance than
anything else in the world, a listener could not fail
to understand. When she asked him of his adventures
she gave him no time for reply, but went on
with her own story. Nobody in the world mattered
so much as Helen Fuller. It began to irritate him
after a while. It never had before.</p>
<p>The car plowed on for some time; it was Barton
himself who stopped it.</p>
<p>“Wait!” he commanded. “What is that I hear?
Shut off your engine, Mr. Gear.”</p>
<p>Then they all heard it—the unmistakable roaring
of a powerful motor. Moreover it was not on the
road before or behind them. It was in the air.</p>
<p>“An aeroplane!” cried Helen.</p>
<p>“A very heavy aero—<i>hein</i>?” queried one of her
fellow nurses.</p>
<p>“And that’s right!” exclaimed the driver. “Foggy
as it is I suppose there are plenty of flying men up
yonder.”</p>
<p>“I have never heard a machine just like that,”
Barton said, in a puzzled tone. “I thought I had
identified the sound of all these French machines—Great
heavens!”</p>
<p>A series of explosions interrupted his speech. Off
to the left they were, in the direction of the village
and the cantonments. Through the thick mist a
flash or two was visible.</p>
<p>“Shells!” yelled Gear.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>“An enemy plane dropping bombs!” ejaculated
Barton. “Must have got past the French escadrille
in this fog.”</p>
<p>A nearer explosion followed and the roar of the
aeroplane’s engine seemed almost over their heads.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVIII<br>
<small>THE WRATH OF THE HUN</small></h2>
</div>
<p>“<span class="smcap">Oh! Oh!</span>” cried Helen, clinging tightly to Barton’s
arm. “Let us turn back!”</p>
<p>“What good’ll that do!” growled Gear, who heard
her.</p>
<p>One of the French nurses crossed herself and murmured
a prayer as Barton could see by her whispering
lips. He could not fail to note how much better the
French girls were taking it than Helen. She had
quite lost her self-control and was fairly hysterical.</p>
<p>He could not afford to show any trepidation himself,
even if he felt it. He was in the uniform of an
officer of the American forces and there were French
eyes upon him. In any case he must not show the
white feather, and it stabbed his pride that Helen,
an American Red Cross nurse, should do so.</p>
<p>An aerial bomb fell nearer and almost deafened
them with its explosion. Barton sprang out of the
motor-car and aided Helen to alight.</p>
<p>“Into the ditch—everybody!” he shouted. “Lie
down!”</p>
<p>He saw Renau and Gear spring to the help of the
other women, then in a moment Barton was rushing
toward the muddy sluiceway with Helen Fuller.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>“Oh, <i>don’t</i> drag me around so, Frank! I’m wet to my
<i>knees</i>. Isn’t there some place—”</p>
<p>The roaring of the powerful motor overhead
drowned her further complaint. It was then that
another shell fell.</p>
<p>Had Barton not dragged the girl down with him—both
falling flat into the bottom of the ditch—they
must have suffered the fate of those who had not
yet got away from the motor-car—the two nurses,
Monsieur Renau, and poor smiling, reckless Johnny
Gear, Johnny, who had run away from home to
“see what the blooming war was like.”</p>
<p>Overhead the aero engine moaned into the distance.
Barton got to his knees and pulled the girl up beside
him. It was light enough for them to see each other.</p>
<p>“Oh! Oh! Take me away! I must go somewhere.
Oh, Frank! I—I’m all <i>muddy</i>,” Helen, poor shallow,
selfish Helen, wailed.</p>
<p>“Oh!” gasped Barton, unheeding. “They’re dead—dead!”</p>
<p>He stood up and tossed back the thick hair from
his brow. He had not his cap. He found his army
pistol gripped in his right hand. His left was holding
up the girl whom he clutched by the shoulder as
carelessly as he might have held a half-filled sack of
flour.</p>
<p>“You’re not <i>listening</i>!” cried Helen. “Don’t you
<i>hear</i>? Take me somewhere—take me where it is
<i>safe</i>.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>He was listening, but not to her cries. That terrible
thing in the air was coming back.</p>
<p>The moan of the powerful engine was increasing
again. A few guns in the distance began to pop.
The Field Artillery was getting into action—<i>and he
was not there</i>.</p>
<p>What carnage might not have already been accomplished!
This terrible thing in the air, swooping
through the fog, might have brought havoc and disaster
to the American forces.</p>
<p>“Take me away! Take me away!” the girl cried
over and over again, fairly clawing at his arm to
attract his attention.</p>
<p>“Where shall I take you? One place is as safe as
another—until this raid is over.”</p>
<p>It was growing lighter all the time. The fog was
rapidly thinning. Suddenly Helen shrieked:</p>
<p>“Where is our car?”</p>
<p>There was nothing but a hole in the road where it
had stood. Not a shred of it remained within their
straining vision. Wiped out—like that!</p>
<p>“Here it comes again!” shouted Barton.</p>
<p>Through the dissipating mist the great sausage-like
body of the German air-raider appeared. It
was one of the newest and largest airships yet conceived
and built. It drifted low—not two hundred
yards from the earth.</p>
<p>“Down on the ground!” commanded Barton.
“If they spy us——”</p>
<figure class="figcenter illowe28_125" id="i_200a">
<img class="w100" src="images/i_200a.jpg" alt="">
<figcaption class="caption"><p class="caption">He did fire—futilely, perhaps—as the great car
circled clumsily above the spot.</p>
<p class="right">(<i>See page <a href="#Page_201">201</a></i>)</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>The huge flying car swooped lower. It seemed to
be heading directly for the two Americans in the
muddy road. The lieutenant flung the girl down
again, but stood erect himself, his legs astride, his
head back, eyes glaring through the shreds of fog
at the airship. He had involuntarily assumed an
attitude of defiance and his pistol was raised at firing
angle.</p>
<p>He did fire—futilely, perhaps—as the great car
circled clumsily above the spot. He emptied the
weapon at the flying foe.</p>
<p>Suddenly—whether a chance bullet had hit some
vital spot or not—a red flame leaped to life in the
envelope of the huge bag. So low sailed the machine
that Barton could see a man run along a narrow platform
and shoot the spray of a chemical fire extinguisher
up at the spreading flame.</p>
<p>Only for a moment was this attempt continued.
Then a second man appeared, and the usual high,
staccato voice of a Prussian officer uttering a command
sounded sharply through the rumble of the
dying motor.</p>
<p>The efforts of the man with the fire extinguisher
ceased. Some catastrophe had overtaken the huge
war machine. Her engine had lost its stroke. She
was coming to earth—and that in enemy territory.
The crew would destroy the ship as they always do
in such instances.</p>
<p>A wild cheer burst from Barton’s lips. Swiftly he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>
reloaded his automatic pistol. The nose of the
wabbly, creaking machine, so clumsy looking that
Barton half wondered how it was ever lifted from
the ground, plunged toward the earth.</p>
<p>It passed directly over the road. The balloon
envelope was afire in a dozen places. Barton could
see the flash of an axe in the officer’s hands as he
wrecked the mechanism of the still flying airship.</p>
<p>There was a deafening crash when the car hit the
ground. The American saw one man, turning over
and over in the air, dashed forty feet at least by the
force of the impact. Other figures climbed down from
the crushed car on to which the balloon collapsed
slowly, all afire.</p>
<p>“Come on!” shouted the excited lieutenant, waving
his weapon. “Now we’ve got ’em!”</p>
<p>“Frank! Stop! Don’t you <i>dare</i> leave me!” wailed
Helen Fuller.</p>
<p>“Wait for me here, Helen——”</p>
<p>“I tell you I <i>won’t</i>!” cried the girl. She stamped
her foot in rage. “You take me right away from
here!”</p>
<p>“But I must round those fellows up. We’ve got
’em—don’t you see? Wait here for me if you are
afraid.”</p>
<p>“I’ll <i>never</i> forgive you, Frank Barton, if you leave
me! And I <i>won’t</i> go over there! Those—those men
will kill us. Oh, Frank! Come back!”</p>
<p>He hesitated but a moment to answer her. “I’m<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>
sure you wouldn’t want me to be a quitter, Helen,”
he declared, and leaped the ditch to get into the field
upon which the wrecked German airship had fallen.</p>
<p>With a scream she followed him. She ran faster
than he, and caught his right arm again just as he
was rounding the rear of the wreckage. Before them
stood fourteen men in the gray olive of the German
uniform. The man thrown when the ship came down
never moved.</p>
<p>Barton saw instantly that the crew of the airship—even
the commander himself—were unarmed.
Good reason for that. Deep in the enemy’s country,
without a possible chance of escape through the lines,
a peaceful demeanor and appearance spelled safety
for them.</p>
<p>Barton raised his pistol, Helen still clinging to his
arm. The Germans, or, at least, those in the front
of the group, raised their hands in token of surrender.
Even the commander called out: “<i>Kamerad!</i>”</p>
<p>“Frank Barton! Take me away! Save me!” shrieked
the hysterical girl.</p>
<p>She hung, a dead weight, upon his arm and pulled
down the weapon. One of the men in the back of
the group had been stooping down, his hands on the
ground. Now he stood up, stepped clear of his companions,
and swung his right hand back.</p>
<p>With the accuracy of a baseball player he flung the
sharp stone he had picked up. Barton tried to fire
and dodge, but Helen’s interference made both attempts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>
impossible. The stone struck him just above
the right temple and glanced off, cutting such a gash
that the blood poured down his face, blinding him.</p>
<p>With a shout the Germans started for Barton and
the girl. The lieutenant, feeling himself helpless,
thrust his weapon into Helen’s hand.</p>
<p>“Defend yourself!” he gasped, and then slipped
slowly to the ground, crumpling in a senseless heap
at her feet.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIX<br>
<small>UNCERTAINTIES</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Had</span> Ethel Clayton known how deep in wild adventure
Barton was as she rode down town in the surface
car watching the little lawyer, she would have been
utterly disgruntled at the tameness of her quest.</p>
<p>Yet it was with thought of Barton in her mind, as
well as of her own personal interest and that of her
mother’s, that the girl forged on. She believed that
a conspiracy was on foot the intent of which was the
ruining of the business structure Frank Barton had
labored so hard to build and make secure. He had
made the Hapwood-Diller Company a going concern.
Somebody was now determined to make abortive
all the general manger’s work and, as well, to ruin
the smaller stockholders.</p>
<p>Who that somebody was Ethel was not certain,
although she had strong suspicions. She believed
A. Schuster to be the link connecting her suspicions
with the truth. She sat quietly in the car and did
not even glance his way after her first hasty appreciation
of the man when he had entered.</p>
<p>In front of the Bellevue he left the car, but Ethel
went on to the next crossing before alighting. She
hurried back. Under the bunch of electric lights<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>
before the main door of the hotel she saw A. Schuster
pass in.</p>
<p>She had expected this. Both Mr. Grandon Fuller
and Jim Mayberry she knew to be habitués of the
hotel. There was a public dining-room at one side of
the front door and the lobby and office were on the
other, with the smoking-room and café back of the
clerk’s desk.</p>
<p>Ethel had already made up her mind what she
would do in this emergency. She mounted the broad
steps briskly and crossed the lobby toward the small
ladies’ parlor behind the stairway. A glance to the
right showed her the black-haired lawyer approaching
the desk.</p>
<p>In one chair lounged the pursy Mr. Fuller. He
vouchsafed Schuster no more than a glance. But
Jim Mayberry, coming from the smoking-room, hailed
the lawyer affably:</p>
<p>“Hi, old man! going to have supper with me?
Come on upstairs while I get into my best bib and
tucker for the evening.”</p>
<p>He clapped Schuster heartily on the shoulder and
led him away toward the little elevator that wheezed
upward asthmatically the next moment. Neither
had looked at Grandon Fuller nor he at them.</p>
<p>This fact was sufficient to have made Ethel Clayton
suspicious had she not been so before. Jim Mayberry
was always so very polite and deferential to
Mr. Fuller when the latter appeared at the factory<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>
offices. It seemed now as though the superintendent
of the Hapwood-Diller Company had ignored the
presence of the chief stockholder too obviously.</p>
<p>Ethel passed hastily on to the parlor; but nothing
of this had escaped her quick eye and understanding.
In the parlor she found a girl in cap and apron whom
she knew. It was Eliza Boling, who presided over
the linen room of the hotel and acted as a sort of
floor clerk on the third floor. Ethel had gone to
school with the girl.</p>
<p>“Oh, Ethel! come up to my desk so we can talk,”
cried Miss Boling, when she caught sight of Miss
Clayton. “I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”</p>
<p>Ethel was nothing loath under the circumstances,
and ran upstairs with her. The slowly moving elevator
had scarcely more than deposited Jim Mayberry
and the lawyer on the third floor. Ethel saw
them approaching one of the doors.</p>
<p>“Isn’t that Mr. Mayberry?” she asked her acquaintance.</p>
<p>“Oh, I suppose it is,” replied the other girl without
looking up. “Don’t let him speak to you. He’s
so awfully fresh!”</p>
<p>“Is that his room?” Ethel asked.</p>
<p>“Number Eighty? Yes. And I wish it was on
another floor.”</p>
<p>Eliza Boling was a somewhat attractive girl, and
Ethel could understand easily that the superintendent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>
of the Hapwood-Diller Company would have made
himself objectionable to her.</p>
<p>The two girls talked of mutual friends and affairs
of mutual interest for some time. Then the elevator
door clanged again. Ethel looked quickly. The
heavy figure of Mr. Grandon Fuller stepped out into
the corridor. He did not glance toward the two girls.</p>
<p>Mr. Fuller walked straight to the door of Number
Eighty. He rapped once and then entered the room.
It was plain his coming was expected.</p>
<p>Ethel had seen enough to assure her that Fuller,
Jim Mayberry, and the sly looking Schuster were engaged
in something that they wished to keep secret
from people in general.</p>
<p>She believed she had traced the conspirators. The
reason for the largest stockholder of the Hapwood-Diller
Company seeking to wreck that concern was,
however, beyond Ethel Clayton’s powers of divination.</p>
<p>For that was exactly the threat of circumstances as
the girl saw it. The forcing down of the price of
Hapwood-Diller stock must in the end ruin the credit
of the corporation. She went home vastly puzzled
by the whole situation.</p>
<p>Her mother was utterly unstrung.</p>
<p>“Oh, Ethel, I feel terribly condemned!” she cried.
“Where have you been? I wish you had come in
earlier so as to hear that Mr. Schuster talk.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to hear him talk,” declared her
daughter.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>“It seems to me, Ethel,” complained Mrs. Clayton,
“that you are siding against me—against your own
interests. I suppose you call that loyalty to your
employer. But Frank Barton isn’t there at the offices
any more. He never ought to have gone away. I
am convinced of that now. The business is on its
last legs. You know it is, but you won’t admit it.”</p>
<p>“I know nothing of the kind, Mother!” cried Ethel
with exasperation. “Why, you talk about the Hapwood-Diller
Company as these pro-Germans do about
the war! And just as unreasonably.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean—calling your own mother a
pro-German?” demanded Mrs. Clayton. “I guess
I’m just as good a patriot as the next one—and I knit
as many socks and sweaters, too!</p>
<p>“But about our shares of stock—that’s different.
Since you’ve been away Amy Hopper’s been in
and she’s sold her shares—she had ten—and has
bought a Ford car. At least, she’s got something
for her money, while we are likely to lose everything.”</p>
<p>Ethel was just completing her warmed-over supper,
and under a steady dropping of her mother’s complaints,
when the porch door banged open and Benway
Chase rushed in.</p>
<p>“Goodness, Bennie, how you scared me!” Mrs.
Clayton ejaculated. “Sit down and have a piece of
pie—do!”</p>
<p>“No. But I’ll stand up and eat it—many thanks,
Mrs. Clayton!” responded the young fellow, whipping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>
the piece of pie off the plate she offered him and
inserting it like a wedge into his mouth for the first
bite. Somehow he managed to utter: “Fire at the
factory, Ethel. Get on your hat and coat.”</p>
<p>“No! Benway?” she gasped, starting up.</p>
<p>“Surest thing you know! You can see the smoke
from the street. I telephoned. It’s confined to
Shop Four. The firemen are there. But let’s go
down and see that nothing’s damaged around the
offices.”</p>
<p>She ran for her coat and hat and they sallied forth,
Benway swallowing the last of the pie as they cleared
the gate. “Gee! but your mother does make good
pie crust, Ethel,” he said.</p>
<p>His boyishness somehow troubled her more than
it usually did just then. Perhaps because her own
thoughts were so serious. He would make a good
match for Mabel Skinner. He would never grow up
enough for Ethel to consider him for a moment as a
partner in life.</p>
<p>The fire was under control when the two young
people reached the factory. Nor had it done much
damage. Moreover, it was well covered with insurance;
but the delay in work under way would be considerable.</p>
<p>“By jove!” said Benway, “the old H-D Company is
up against it for fair. Everything is going wrong with
it. You’d think the place was bewitched, wouldn’t
you?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>“Hush! Let us not talk about such things. John
says it was faulty insulation. But how came there
to be faulty insulation in that shop? Somebody is
guilty of criminal carelessness. Oh, I wish Frank
Barton were here!”</p>
<p>This last wish she did not let Benway hear. And,
indeed, what could Barton have done had he been
on the spot? The Board of Directors met the next
day and even Mr. Hammerly could find nobody to
“jack up.”</p>
<p>The grain dealer was in a fine rage, however. The
meeting was as acrimonious a session as had ever
been held since the reorganization of the corporation.
Ethel was only called into the room once and then
Hammerly did not speak to her. And after the meeting
he pulled his hat down over his ears and stamped
out of the offices without a word.</p>
<p>She wondered what he had done with the paper
she had given him—the specification sheet of the
Kimberly Binding Company order. It seemed strange
that he had never taken her into his confidence at
all about that matter.</p>
<p>It leaked out in some way, however, after this
meeting, that the old grain merchant was beaten by
Grandon Fuller and his friends and that Jim Mayberry
was likely to be made manager in Barton’s
place at the next quarterly meeting. She had noticed
that the superintendent left the Board meeting
with a smile. He had given Ethel a hard look, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>
she was well aware of what awaited her in the near
future if Mayberry had his way.</p>
<p>There was a streak of fair weather for her in a day
or two, however. Another letter arrived from France,
and this time it was not merely an impersonal narrative
of the absent’s manager’s adventures in uniform.
There was an intimate note to the missive that
warmed Ethel’s heart to a glow. Yet she realized
that not a phrase went beyond proper friendliness.</p>
<p>She read it all to the others in the office, although
it was not just the same as his first letter had been.
She did not let the sheets go out of her own hands,
however. There was a personal atmosphere to it
which made her fold the letter finally and hide it
in her blouse. This betrayed a softness that would
have angered Ethel had anybody accused her of it.</p>
<p>Other people heard about the letter, however, and
she was stopped for several days upon the street by
friends of Barton asking after him. Secretly she was
proud that it was she whom he had selected as a correspondent
among all those who knew and were
interested in him here in Mailsburg.</p>
<p>Then Mrs. Trevor came to the office to see her.
The boarding-house mistress who had housed and
fed Frank Barton so long was a rather grim woman
in an old-fashioned Paisley shawl and arctics. Her
hands were red and gnarled and her back was as
curveless as a ramrod.</p>
<p>When she strode into the Hapwood-Diller offices<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>
she was as stern as a grenadier. Her mere appearance
quelled even Mabel Skinner. But when she
came close to Ethel Clayton’s desk the girl saw that
her eyelids were red-rimmed and that she had difficulty
in keeping her lips from trembling.</p>
<p>“Miss Clayton—you’re Miss Clayton, ain’t you?”
she began. “Ethel Clayton?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” agreed Ethel. “You are Mrs. Trevor?”</p>
<p>The woman nodded. Then said: “What do you
know about Frank Barton? I hear you got a letter
from him?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Mrs. Trevor.”</p>
<p>“When was it writ?”</p>
<p>Ethel told her, understanding too well to consider
Mrs. Trevor at all impertinent. She told her most
of what was in the letter, too, for it was burned into
her memory too clearly for her to forget what Frank
Barton had said.</p>
<p>“Well,” said the woman, with a sigh, “I had to
know. I expect I’m an old fool. But that boy was
with me long, Miss Clayton.”</p>
<p>“I think I understand,” the girl said gently.</p>
<p>“You see, I got to dreaming of him. Night afore
last I had a terrible dream. I saw him with his face
all bloody, his empty hands in the air—sort of clutching
like—and him falling down just like he was
dead. And there was smoke and fire all about, just
as though he was in battle. It’s worried me a lot.”</p>
<p>“I should think it would, Mrs. Trevor,” Ethel said.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>
“But you know, they say dreams go by contraries.”</p>
<p>“So they say, but I don’t know as it is always
true. I’ve had dreams——”</p>
<p>“Oh, you mustn’t let dreams get on your nerves,”
broke in Ethel hastily.</p>
<p>“Well, the dear boy meant so much to me. You
can’t imagine what a good boarder he was—no
trouble at all—leas’wise not alongside o’ some of
’em. Lordy! what a lot of trouble some of ’em do
make, to be sure. But Frank Barton—he’s one boy
out of a thousand, yes, he is;” and the old boarding-house
mistress bobbed her head vigorously.</p>
<p>“You mustn’t worry. It will be all right, I’m
sure,” answered the girl, but rather weakly.</p>
<p>“You feel sure, Miss Clayton?”</p>
<p>“You must look on the bright side. It will be
all right.”</p>
<p>“Well, I hope so!” The woman then tramped out
of the office. She was plainly relieved and comforted.
But Ethel was not.</p>
<p>Of course she did not believe in dreams. But what
Mrs. Trevor had said remained in the girl’s mind—stuck
to her memory like a burr. She was constantly
seeing Frank Barton falling down, his face
masked in blood. She almost accepted Mrs. Trevor’s
vision as prophetic.</p>
<p>Then came the day when the Mailsburg <i>Clarion</i>
printed an afternoon extra edition. Those in the
office heard the boys shouting it under the windows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>
and Benway Chase ran out to buy a paper. Across
the sheet was the headline:</p>
<p class="center">GERMAN AIR RAID ON AMERICAN CAMP!<br>
METEOR DIVISION BOMBED!</p>
<p>The Field Artillery with which Frank Barton
served was a part of the so-styled Meteor Division.</p>
<p>Ethel Clayton realized this while the paper was
still across the room from her. She sat perfectly
still at her desk, clutching the edge of it to keep down
the cry that rose to her lips.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XX<br>
<small>SO FAR AWAY!</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Benway Chase</span> was looking at her and Ethel realized
that in the boy’s eyes there was an expression of
pain and despair that gave almost a tragic cast to his
countenance. He had suddenly become aware that
his old-time friend, the girl he had always worshiped,
was given to the very last fibre of her being
to another.</p>
<p>His lips moved stiffly as he came nearer to her desk.</p>
<p>“Is it Mr. Barton’s division!” he questioned,
brokenly. “Oh, Ethel!”</p>
<p>“His Field Artillery is a part of the Meteor Division,”
she said, and was surprised that her voice was
unshaken.</p>
<p>“And you—” He did not finish the speech. His
gaze dropped. The others gathered around to read
the startling news in the <i>Clarion</i>.</p>
<p>Besides the headlines emblazoned across the page,
there was not much to read. The War Department
merely announced that it was reported—a report as
yet unverified—that the Germans had raided the
American camp. No casualties were announced.
As previously declared, the Department would make
all particulars public as soon as the undisputed facts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>
were received from the officer commanding the division.</p>
<p>Mayberry must have heard the buzz of conversation
from the private office. He appeared, an ominous
scowl on his brow.</p>
<p>“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Is this
all you people have to do? I believe the Hapwood-Diller
Company could get along just as well with
half the office force we have.”</p>
<p>“Let you and me enlist, Mayberry,” suggested
Sydney. “They could get along without us, that’s
sure.”</p>
<p>Little Skinner giggled. The superintendent, who
had some fear of Sydney, strode forward without
replying to the bookkeeper and took the paper out of
Josephine Durand’s hand. He held some papers in
a sheaf in his left hand and when he caught sight of
the headlines he put his papers on the desk the
better to handle the smutted newspaper.</p>
<p>Ethel had not risen. In flapping open the <i>Clarion</i>
Mayberry started a circulation of air that scattered
his sheaf of papers. Ethel gathered them together
and stacked them into a neat packet. But this
time a different paper was on top of the pile. She
saw that the top sheet was headed: “A. Schuster.”</p>
<p>“What’s all this about?” Mayberry was saying.
“Murder! Was Barton in it?”</p>
<p>“His battalion is attached to that division, Mr.
Mayberry,” Benway said.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>“Well, maybe he’s seen some real fighting, then,”
the superintendent said cheerfully. “That’s what
he went over there for, I suppose.”</p>
<p>He dropped the <i>Clarion</i> upon Ethel’s desk and
picked up his papers. Seeing what lay on top he
flashed the girl a sudden suspicious glance. But
Ethel seemed oblivious of it.</p>
<p>Indeed, it seemed as though all save the phlegmatic
superintendent were too thoroughly disturbed to
set their minds on office matters. Ethel betrayed
less emotion than most of them, perhaps; but then
it was her nature to hide her keener feelings.</p>
<p>The few following days she found hard to live
through. The strain upon her patience was great.
The papers were filled with frothings and imaginations
about the raid on the American camp. Then
came the truth with the list of casualties.</p>
<p>The list was small. One enlisted man killed, seven
wounded and one missing. The huge German flying
machine had been brought down, one of its crew
losing his life, the other fourteen being captured by
Second-Lieutenant Charles Bradley with a part of
his company.</p>
<p>With hungry eyes Ethel Clayton read the list of
casualties. The last line yielded the news which
she had feared all along:</p>
<p class="center">“<i>Lieutenant F. Barton, Field Artillery, missing.</i>”</p>
<p>There was a full account in the papers of the raid
and the bringing down of the German raider. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>
the single statement, that Frank Barton was missing,
added a spice of mystery to the affair that created
a good deal of excitement in Mailsburg.</p>
<p>It could not be possible, if all the German raiders
were captured or killed, that Frank Barton was himself
captured and taken into the German lines. That
seemed improbable. Yet the sinister report stood.</p>
<p>What had happened to him? Would Ethel ever
hear from him again? Was his fate to be one of
those mysteries of war that are never satisfactorily
explained? Of the three lurid headings of the casualty
list, killed, wounded, missing, the last is always
the most nerve-breaking.</p>
<p>Just at this time, however, Ethel Clayton’s mind
was scarified by other and serious troubles. She had
decided that at last the evidence of conspiracy was
sufficient to lay before Mr. Hammerly; and as the
latter seemed to make no move the girl went to him.</p>
<p>“The quarterly meeting is near. I understand that
Mr. Mayberry is to be advanced to Mr. Barton’s
position,” she said to the old grain dealer. “To me
it looks like ruin for us all. My mother has some
interest in it, Mr. Hammerly, so I am speaking for
her, not for myself as an employee.”</p>
<p>“Humph! No! You’d best keep out of it, Ethel,”
said the old man. “Leave this to me. I’ve learned
something about this Schuster, though I never saw
him. If I need your evidence I’ll call on you in the
board meeting. But I reckon I can link up A.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>
Schuster with the proper parties without your verbal
testimony.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile Jim Mayberry made himself as unpleasant
around the offices as he could. He felt, it
seemed, that he would soon have all the force at his
mercy, unless it were Sydney. He would scarcely
dare discharge the bookkeeper, who had been so long
with the corporation.</p>
<p>“Mayberry hangs the sword of Damocles over our
heads,” Benway growled one evening to Ethel. “I
can feel the breath of it on the back of my neck, at
least. I might as well be looking around for another
job.”</p>
<p>Ethel had no word of comfort for him. She did
not see herself just how it was coming out. It seemed
probable that Frank Barton would never come back
now; so why should the stockholders keep his situation
for him?</p>
<p>The day for the quarterly board meeting arrived,
and the board room buzzed like a hive of disturbed
bees. Thoroughly in touch as she was with the reports
from all departments, Ethel knew very well
that the expected blow must fall.</p>
<p>The usual dividend must be passed. The circumstances
of the corporation would not allow anything
else to be done. The last two quarterly reports
showed a decline in profits, in production, and in
value of plant, which fairly staggered most of the
board members.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>“It stands to reason,” Grandon Fuller stated in his
decided way, “that before he went away, Mr. Barton
was covering up a good many things that he would
better have given us notice of. We can excuse the
enthusiasm and anxiety of the young, perhaps; he
was very desirous of getting out of it all and putting
on the army khaki. But now we have suffered
enough—this corporation I mean—because of his
mistakes. We must get back on a stable foundation.
Somebody must get a firm grip upon the Hapwood-Diller
Company.”</p>
<p>“Suppose Brother Fuller tells us just wherein Frank
Barton is to be blamed for our present situation?”
suggested Macon Hammerly, with surprising gentleness
for him. “We want facts, not allegations.”</p>
<p>“You know very well how he bungled that Kimberly
order.”</p>
<p>“I have affidavits of a chemist and two handwriting
experts here,” interposed Hammerly, shuffling
the papers before him, “which state that two lines
in the Kimberly Company’s schedule sheet were
erased, and in the two interpolated lines an attempt
made by somebody to copy the writing of the young
woman who made the schedule. In other words a
deliberate and successful attempt to change the substance
of the Kimberly order was made after it passed
out of Mr. Barton’s hands.”</p>
<p>There was immediate uproar—denial by Fuller and
angry talk by some of the other members of the board.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>
Hammerly grimly displayed his affidavits and proved
his case to the satisfaction of most of the board of
directors.</p>
<p>“The fact remains,” cried Grandon Fuller, “that
our shares are selling in the open market as low as
sixty. The news has got out that the business is
tottering for want of a strong hand to manage it.”</p>
<p>“We’ll take that up, too,” interposed Hammerly.
“I have here a list of shares and whom they were
bought from by a man named A. Schuster. These
shares have been thrown on the market by various
brokers at ridiculous prices. They were all bought
up again by A. Schuster! And this same tricky legal
light has been the representative of a certain member
of this board in New York for the past three years.”</p>
<p>This remarkable statement produced a profound
sensation. For a brief instant there was intense
silence as the members of the board looked at each
other. Then—</p>
<p>“What are you saying?”</p>
<p>“That’s a grave accusation!”</p>
<p>“Can you prove your words?”</p>
<p>“It’s a crime to do what you’re hinting at, Hammerly.”</p>
<p>“He can’t prove a thing!”</p>
<p>“He don’t know what he’s talking about!”</p>
<p>“Shut him up!”</p>
<p>“He ought to be put out of the meeting!”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>“That’s the talk. He is going too far. This is
a meeting of gentlemen.”</p>
<p>Thus came the chorus of objections, not alone
from Grandon Fuller. But Macon Hammerly’s
scowl quelled the riot.</p>
<p>“I know whereof I speak,” he said solemnly. “I
have papers and witnesses to prove it. And I have
reason to suppose, in addition, that Mr. Grandon
Fuller has made some wash sales of his own shares
of the Hapwood-Diller Company that in the first
place bore down the price. Let him deny it if he
dares!”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXI<br>
<small>THE BURDEN</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> game of “freeze out” fathered by the heaviest
stockholder in the Hapwood-Diller Company betrayed
by Macon Hammerly’s confident statements
was but an incident of that stormy meeting of the
board. The latter was thoroughly reorganized before
the end of the session. And that spelled utter defeat
for Mr. Fuller’s plans.</p>
<p>He held some of his friends on the board; but Hammerly
was a shrewd politician. He voted more proxies
than Fuller could assemble. The latter found himself
ousted from the chairmanship; the grain merchant
was voted into the vacant place by a satisfactory
majority. The smoke of battle cleared away, leaving
Grandon Fuller slumped down in his chair with
a sour face and Jim Mayberry looking glum and at
the same time half-frightened and half-dazed.</p>
<p>“Send for Ethel Clayton,” ordered the new chairman.
“We want stenographic notes of what goes
on here. If any of our stockholders question what
we do we must be able to spread before them an exact
report of our actions. Under the old régime this
was impossible. There was too much secret diplomacy
here,” and he grinned.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>Ethel realized the tenseness of the situation when
she came into the board room, book and pencil in
hand. She was given a seat at Hammerly’s right
hand.</p>
<p>“Now,” said the grim looking grain dealer, “you
have something to say, I presume, Jim?” and he
looked at the superintendent.</p>
<p>“I say what I said before, Mr. Hammerly,” grumbled
Mayberry. “If I can’t have a free hand I can’t
undertake to manage the concern, and that’s all there
is to it.”</p>
<p>“But you can continue as superintendent, I presume?”
softly asked Hammerly. “That job isn’t
too big for you, is it?”</p>
<p>The younger man’s face flamed and he answered
angrily: “I don’t know what you mean. Nobody
ever complained of my work before.”</p>
<p>“While Barton was on the job to overlook you—no,”
admitted the old man, his sarcasm biting.
“True. But things have been going badly in the
various shops. That fire in Number Four the other
day, for instance.”</p>
<p>“By thunder!” exploded Mayberry, “you can’t
blame me for that! I can’t be in a dozen places at
once.”</p>
<p>“There have been quite unnecessary breakdowns,
and work has been retarded. How do you explain
these things?” demanded Mr. Hammerly.</p>
<p>“I—I——”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>“I don’t mean to say you are not a good man in
your place, Jim,” said the grain merchant. “But
Barton’s job is too big for you. I did not believe you
could begin to fill his shoes at the start.”</p>
<p>“Yet you agreed that Barton should go away?”
questioned Grandon Fuller.</p>
<p>“Yes. He wanted to go. For patriotic reasons I
could not thwart his desire. And in addition I knew
that if Jim here fell down—as he has—we would not
be helpless.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean by that?” asked Seville Baker,
who owned a drug store and had several thousand
dollars invested in the Hapwood-Diller Company
stock.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry’s face was fiery again. Even Grandon
Fuller sat up to stare at Hammerly. The others
seemed as much amazed.</p>
<p>The old grain dealer grinned for a moment rather
sheepishly. Then a new expression came into his face,
for he turned to look at the girl beside him. His
gnarled right hand crept over her white and well
shaped left. She glanced up from her book, startled.</p>
<p>“I tell you what ’tis,” said Hammerly in his homely
way; “if I was as blind as you other fellers are this
board would be about as much good as an old women’s
sewing bee! That’s what!</p>
<p>“There’s been just one person that’s kept things
going half smoothly in the Hapwood-Diller Company
since Frank Barton cleared out to be a soldier. And<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>
that person had a good deal to do toward helping
Frank when he was on the job.</p>
<p>“Don’t you fellers know that Miss Clayton here
was Frank’s right hand man? She knows all the ins
and outs of things. It was her caught this poor fish,
Jim Mayberry, selling us out to the Bogata Company.
She’s been of much more importance lately, I can
tell you. If we pull out of this hole we are in and
pay a dividend again, it will be because of what she
has done.”</p>
<p>Grandon Fuller dragged himself to his feet. He
had a power of repression scarcely second to Hammerly
himself. But this was too much.</p>
<p>“You old fool!” he shouted at the grain dealer.
“You don’t mean to try to put a woman in charge of
this business? It’s suicidal!”</p>
<p>“I mean just that. I mean Miss Clayton’s able
to fill the job, and Jim Mayberry ain’t. She’s a better
man when it comes to business sense than any
of us. I nominate her for the place of assistant manager,
to hold the job till Frank Barton comes back
to us—if the poor feller ever does come back.”</p>
<p>“I won’t vote on such a fool proposition,” cried
Fuller wrathfully, starting for the door.</p>
<p>“Don’t bother to, Grandon,” drawled Hammerly.
“You’d be beat if you did—and you know it. I’ve
got more proxies than you have.”</p>
<figure class="figcenter illowe28_125" id="i_227a">
<img class="w100" src="images/i_227a.jpg" alt="">
<figcaption class="caption"><p class="caption">“I nominate her as assistant manager, to hold
the job till Frank Barton comes back.”</p>
<p class="right">(<i>See page <a href="#Page_227">227</a></i>)</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The door of the board room banged. Ethel Clayton
had turned to speak, but Hammerly was scowling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>
at Jim Mayberry, who had risen as though to
follow his fellow-conspirator. “Spit it out, Jim. Tell
us what’s on your chest.”</p>
<p>“I—I——You old fool!” exclaimed the superintendent,
“do you think I am going to work here under
a <i>girl</i>? To be set aside for her?”</p>
<p>“No; I don’t guess you will,” responded Hammerly.
“We’ll give you a chance to resign if that’s what you
want. And I guess your resignation will be accepted
pretty nigh unanimous.”</p>
<p>“But Mr. Hammerly,” begged Seville Baker,
feebly, “what will happen to the works? Mr. Mayberry
has been superintendent so long——”</p>
<p>“There’s a good foreman in every shop who has
been on his job longer than Jim Mayberry has voted.
They’ve only been hampered by Jim—that’s the truth
of the matter.”</p>
<p>“I will be through at the end of the month, gentlemen,”
said Mayberry, recovering his dignity. “The
high hand Mr. Hammerly takes in this matter——”</p>
<p>“Shoo!” exclaimed the grain merchant with grim
pleasantry. “You’ll get through right here and now.
I for one wouldn’t trust you to go out into the shops
again. You go to Sydney and draw your salary to
the end of next month. You broke your contract
when you accepted the assistant managership and
extra salary. Your dear friend, Fuller, or his legal
henchman, Schuster, didn’t point that out to you,
did they? Sydney’s got the money all in an envelope<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>
for you. Scat!” and he waved both hands at the
angry Mayberry.</p>
<p>“Now,” the old man added, turning to his conferees,
“maybe you fellows think I’ve taken a high
hand in these proceedings; but to tell you honestly,
we ought to have both Mayberry and Grandon Fuller
arrested. Only it would have created a scandal that
the Hapwood-Diller Company couldn’t afford at this
time.”</p>
<p>“We don’t want any scandal,” came from the
corner of the room.</p>
<p>“We’ve had enough trouble as it is,” came from
the other side of the place.</p>
<p>“Let us get right down to a working basis—and
let it go at that.”</p>
<p>“What we want to do is to pull up and make
some money.”</p>
<p>At this last remark, Macon Hammerly turned to
the speaker and smiled grimly. Then he went on:</p>
<p>“There ain’t no use in denying that we’re in a bad
hole. We’ve run behind for two quarters, and our
credit’s hurt by those stock sales. It’s going to be a
heavy burden upon this girl’s shoulders—as it was
upon Frank Barton’s—to pull us out. But she’ll
do it! Won’t you, Ethel?” he demanded heartily.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Hammerly,” the girl murmured.</p>
<p>“Louder! Tell them ‘Yes,’” cried the grain merchant.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>“I can only follow in Mr. Barton’s footsteps,” she
stammered.</p>
<p>“And good enough!” declared Mr. Baker.</p>
<p>“If you can do half as well as Barton, Miss Clayton,”
said another of the revivified board, “we shall
have no complaint.”</p>
<p>“We’ll be behind you, girl,” said Macon Hammerly.
“Keep the wheels turning, speed up the output,
and watch the outgoes as well as the incomes.
That’s the secret of success in this business. And
the Lord help you!” he added under his breath, but
the excited girl herself did not hear his less jubilant
tone.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXII<br>
<small>THE FIGHT</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">With</span> a reunited board behind her and canny Macon
Hammerly to advise with, it might seem at the rising
of the curtain on Ethel Clayton’s régime as <i>de
facto</i> manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing
Company that her course would be along pleasant
paths.</p>
<p>Instead she very soon found that she was walking
over burning plowshares.</p>
<p>That Grandon Fuller was beaten in his control of
the board of directors did not make him amenable
to the new policies of the Hapwood-Diller Company
and the reign of a girl as manager of the business.</p>
<p>He boldly stated that he considered the knell of
the company had rung because of the situation in the
offices. If a full-grown man like Jim Mayberry could
not handle the business so as to make a profit, how
could a girl be expected to do so?</p>
<p>That Mr. Fuller’s intention was still to discourage
the small stockholders so that he could buy up their
holdings at a low price and finally control the corporation,
could not be overlooked. Yet he was careful
to do nothing now that would give Hammerly a legal
hold on him.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>Mayberry was out of it, or so it seemed. He went
to work for the Mailsburg Addition Real Estate
Company, of which Mr. Fuller was known to be the
backer. It was a good deal of a come-down for Jim
Mayberry.</p>
<p>On that wonderful day when Hammerly had carried
his point and had given the welfare of the business
into Ethel’s hands, the foremen of the shops had
been called in before the board and the situation
explained to them.</p>
<p>They were not asked to express their opinion of
Jim Mayberry’s oversight of the factory, nor to explain
their own apparent shortcomings and the failure
of their several shops to keep up to the standard
of output established by Mr. Barton.</p>
<p>Merely they were asked if they would be loyal to
the corporation, and if they were willing to work in
harmony with Ethel Clayton until such time as a
general superintendent could be found to take Mayberry’s
place. These questions brought enthusiastic
and unanimous affirmative responses.</p>
<p>But a willingness upon the part of all the hands
was not all that was needed. When a manufacturing
plant, either in its mechanical part or in its working
force, has been allowed to deteriorate, it is uphill
work to get it back on a firm foundation.</p>
<p>Ethel felt that with the good teamwork of the
office force which she could depend upon, her burden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>
at that end would be light. In the factory administration
lay her difficult problem.</p>
<p>She depended on Benway Chase in no inconsiderable
degree, as she knew he had gained a working knowledge
of the factory affairs. Benway had continued
to make himself acquainted with practical things
and much shoplore. The foremen liked him, too,
and would discuss things with the young fellow that
they might have been chary of talking over with
“the lady boss,” as they began to call her.</p>
<p>There was not an ounce of business jealousy in
Ethel Clayton’s makeup. She gave Benway all the
encouragement possible, and after the first two weeks
she reported to the board that she could not possibly
carry on the work at all were it not for Benway, or
somebody equally efficient and willing in his stead.</p>
<p>Since the news of the air raid on the American camp
in France, Benway had been even gentler and more
considerate of Ethel than before; but there was, too,
a certain aloofness in his manner which the girl quite
understood.</p>
<p>He had captured Ethel’s secret. His own love
for her had given him an immediate key to her
emotion when she first saw the headlines spread over
the news sheet. Frank Barton’s peril had caused her
to betray her feeling for him to the love-sharpened
vision of Benway.</p>
<p>Since that time no news save that he was still
missing had come of Frank Barton. It was well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>
Ethel’s mind was so filled with business matters and
that her every waking hour was occupied by the
affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company. She had
no opportunity of dwelling in thought upon that
line in the casualty list that had not been explained:
“<i>Lieut. F. Barton, Field Artillery, missing</i>.”</p>
<p>When the clergyman prayed on Sunday for those
who had gone “over there” to fight in their country’s
cause, Ethel thought of but one person. It seemed
to her as though the whole war—the fate of a worldwide
democracy—was as nothing compared to the
mystery of what had happened to Frank Barton.</p>
<p>She was not alone in this desire to know the fate
of the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.
Mrs. Trevor came more than once to discuss
the mystery with her. She began to learn how many
friends Frank Barton really had in Mailsburg. His
cheerful, kindly spirit had won him a following of
which any man might feel proud.</p>
<p>Mr. Macon Hammerly had used his influence to
make inquiry. But the War Department, like most
large bodies, moves slowly. The questions from
Lieutenant Barton’s friends were not the only fear-fraught
queries that must be answered.</p>
<p>Nobody in Mailsburg, it seemed, had heard from
any of the town’s sons who had gone to France when
Barton went. The boys drafted from the town were
still in the training camps on this side of the water.
As far as Ethel could learn no one had heard directly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>
from Morrison Copley or Charles Bradley since that
tragic happening.</p>
<p>Ethel’s pillow was often wet at night because of
Frank Barton’s fate; but by day the business difficulties
that faced her held her mind in thrall. She
began to appreciate more than ever before what Barton
himself had gone through when he had first taken
hold of the job of putting the Hapwood-Diller Company
on a paying basis.</p>
<p>And she had problems to solve that Barton had
not been obliged to consider. In two years and a
half circumstances had greatly changed. The labor
situation was one of the hardest of Ethel’s enigmas.</p>
<p>Besides the hundred or more men who had been
drafted from the shops, and others who had enlisted,
many of the best mechanics had gone away to work
in munition plants where the wages were vastly
higher than the Hapwood-Diller Company could
afford to pay.</p>
<p>This had brought into the shops a class of workmen
who were not, to say the least, high grade. There
was unrest among them, too. Having no feeling of
loyalty for the corporation, these new workmen were
really a menace to the peaceful conduct of the business.</p>
<p>Little troubles rose almost daily, many of which
could not be settled by the shop foremen. After
all, the absence of a strong hand over the factory as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>
a whole, began to be felt. And Ethel realized this
lack quite as soon as anybody.</p>
<p>With the old hands she would have had some personal
influence. With the new workmen—many of
them foreigners—she could do little.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry was a burly man, and not afraid to
“bawl a man out” if occasion arose. If he threatened
to knock a man down he looked as though he could
do it. That may not be the most approved way of
keeping a lot of unruly workmen in order; but it is
often efficacious.</p>
<p>Benway Chase could merely be Ethel’s errand boy.
Benway felt his limitations keenly. “If I only had
a good right arm!” he groaned more than once.</p>
<p>“No use worrying about that, Bennie,” she said.
“We must find some way to manage besides knocking
their heads together. There are only a few who
make trouble. Don’t you think we can get rid of
them?”</p>
<p>But labor was so scarce and the factory was so
crowded with orders that she shrank from such a
drastic course. She had an intuitive feeling, too,
that the discharge of certain trouble-makers would
bring other trouble-makers to the surface.</p>
<p>More than once she was stopped in front of the
office or on her way home by some worker grown
bold by the changed condition of affairs.</p>
<p>“What about more wages, Miss?” one burly man<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>
asked her, quite abruptly. “If wages don’t go up
soon, I quit.”</p>
<p>“Everything is so high, my wife says I’ve got to
earn more,” was what a tall, thin workman told her
right in front of her own home. And two days later
both of these men demanded their time and left.</p>
<p>“It sure is getting worse every day,” was the way
Benway Chase put it. “I don’t see how it’s going
to end.”</p>
<p>“Maybe we’ll have to shut down,” Ethel answered.</p>
<p>“Oh, you don’t mean that!”</p>
<p>“No, I don’t. But there is no telling what will
happen,” said the girl, soberly.</p>
<p>She felt that poison was seeping into the working
force from without. Nothing she could say or do
would stop it. The foremen admitted that the tone
of the shops had entirely changed. If they were
able to get a fair day’s work turned out they were
doing well. And many of the men did their stint
grudgingly.</p>
<p>The wages of all the hands had been advanced
twice since Frank Barton had first taken hold of the
corporation. Had business remained good and profits
increased, it had been his intention, Ethel knew, to
ask the board of directors for another advance at the
end of the third year.</p>
<p>But with affairs in the mess they were—a quarterly
dividend passed and the output decreased—there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>
would be no hope of following out this intention of
the absent general manager.</p>
<p>Many factories in neighboring towns had turned
to war work of one kind or another. But the machinery
of the Hapwood-Diller Company, built for
special need, could not be used on any war work
that Ethel had ever yet heard of.</p>
<p>The factory of the defunct Bogata Company was
being used for munition work. People from Mailsburg
were flocking to Norville, attracted by the high
wages. One by one the Hapwood-Diller Company’s
best workmen left and went to work at the Norville
plant.</p>
<p>Ethel’s report to the board was sure to be a report
of failure. She realized that she did not measure up
to the demands of her position. To claim she was
helpless would not absolve her from the fact she was
a failure. That could not be cloaked.</p>
<p>This was her job. She had accepted it. If she
could not make good she should give it up. She
began to feel that Ethel Clayton might be a good
enough hack; but she lacked the ability necessary to
carry her to the front in the business race. She
was away back in the ruck.</p>
<p>These were her feelings and meditations one evening
when, after the others had gone, she still remained
in the office, as she often did.</p>
<p>Her work for the day was done. Hours of consideration,
it seemed, would not aid her in making<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>
the figures on the credit side of the ledger add up to
a larger sum than the figures on the debit side.</p>
<p>She stood with her back to her desk, hands gripping
its edge, her eyes emptily staring at the wall.
Her mental vision was alert, not her physical.</p>
<p>If Frank Barton could only return! If he would
only walk in at that door—just to advise with her,
to hearten her, to suggest to her agitated mind some
scheme by which she might put life into this business.</p>
<p>Would she ever see him again now that he had
marched away? Her mind pictured the marching
past of that host of high-hearted men and boys,
bound for a foreign shore from which many necessarily
would never return. And it seemed Frank
Barton was one of the very first to be lost to the
knowledge of his friends—lost to those who loved
him!</p>
<p>The outer door banged open heavily. She knew
John Murphy had not yet gone home, and she looked
up expecting to see his grizzled visage.</p>
<p>Instead it was the sharp and eager features of
Mabel Skinner. The younger girl came in like a
whirlwind.</p>
<p>“Oh, Ethel! Miss Clayton!” she gasped. “Guess!”</p>
<p>“Guess what?”</p>
<p>“Guess what I just heard down at Rhyncamp’s
store! That Marble girl was there! You know—the
Marbles who live right next to the Fuller house.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>“I know. What of it?” asked Ethel, excited,
though she did not know why she should be.</p>
<p>“She’s chums with that Fuller girl. You know—Grandon
Fuller’s daughter Helen. She went to
France to join the Red Cross.”</p>
<p>Ethel’s clasped hands showed her interest. She
could not speak. Her eyes searched the vivid face
of Little Skinner pleadingly.</p>
<p>“The Marble girl’s just got a letter from Helen
Fuller. I heard her tell Mr. Rhyncamp. Miss
Fuller is nursing in a hospital over there somewhere.
She says her very first patient was Mr. Barton. He
ain’t dead, then, Miss Clayton! He ain’t dead! He’s
only wounded! Oh, Miss Clayton!”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIII<br>
<small>COMPARISONS</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Mabel Skinner’s</span> news was true. The letter Miss
Marble had received told the story from Helen Fuller’s
standpoint. But let the heroics in it be the nine
days’ wonder of Mailsburg. Here are the facts:</p>
<p>Frank Barton came to his senses slowly and found
himself upon a cot, one of a long line, in a ward of
the base hospital at Lovin, as the place may be called,
without the first idea of how he got there. His last
memory was of facing the crew of the German air-raider
with Helen Fuller clinging to his arm and making
it impossible to defend her or himself or to deal
effectively with the enemy before them.</p>
<p>“Where—where am I?” he stammered. “What
happened?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Frank!” squealed a voice, and some one in
correct nurse’s garb stood beside him. “You’re
not going to die, are you? Isn’t that just <i>dear</i>!”</p>
<p>“Oh, heavens!” groaned Lieutenant Barton, in
something like despair. “<i>You</i> here?”</p>
<p>Were Frank Barton’s eyes at last seeing truly? It
was, perhaps, the most impolite speech he had ever
made. But he was very weak and still a little lightheaded.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>Had the quiet-faced French matron of the ward
understood much English, she surely would have removed
Miss Fuller from attendance on the lieutenant
almost at once. As it was he had to listen to the
girl’s fulsome praises and silly ejaculations.</p>
<p>It was not until some time later that Barton learned
just what had happened after he had been hit with
the sharp stone and had handed his weapon to the
distracted Helen.</p>
<p>“Why, that Heinie used to pitch in one of the bush
leagues,” Morrison Copley told Barton, when he
came to see his lieutenant. “Lived ten years in
America and then went back to fight for Kultur.
Something’s going to happen to him, for the lieutenant
in command of the airship declares all bets off. He
had warned his men not to fight.”</p>
<p>“I wonder what they had in their mind when they
started for me. Going to kiss me, I suppose,” Barton
suggested weakly.</p>
<p>“Bah jove! that’s a good one,” said Morry. “I
must tell that to Brad. Say, that lad got ‘mention’
in general orders for capturing the gang. But he
walks right up to the colonel, and says: ‘Colonel, it
wasn’t much to capture fourteen men that were not
armed. How about Lieutenant Barton who tackled
them single handed and perhaps helped bring the
old Zep down anyway?’”</p>
<p>“That’s all right,” commented Barton. “Good of
Bradley. But, really, I did no more than another<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>
man would have done. Those poor people in the
car that were blown to bits——”</p>
<p>“And it was a car that followed on behind that
one that picked you and Mam’zelle Hélène up,”
grinned Morry, “and brought you cross country to
Lovin. That’s how you were lost trace of. Guess
the folks at home must think you evaporated into
thin air, Lieutenant. But they’ll know the truth
very soon now. I’ve written home about you.”</p>
<p>But that was not entirely satisfactory to Frank
Barton. He wanted to write himself. He had a
strong and particular reason for writing, and to a
particular girl.</p>
<p>Aside from the wound in his head—a wound which
would always leave a scar—his right arm was strapped
tightly to his side. He had a fracture of the shoulder
that made a cast necessary and would entail a long
convalescence. Frank Barton’s active military career
was halted before it was much more than begun.</p>
<p>The delayed report of his wounds did not officially
reach Mailsburg until after both Helen’s letter to
Miss Marble and Morrison Copley’s “open letter”
to the Mailsburg <i>Clarion</i> were received. Barton was
the first of the town’s boys reported under fire
and the first to suffer injury in the war.</p>
<p>A delayed letter from Ethel had reached Barton
soon after he found himself established in the hospital
ward with Helen Fuller hovering about him a good
part of every day.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>“Business, I suppose, Frank?” she observed when
she saw the name and address on the back of the envelope.
“<i>Can’t</i> those factory people let you alone,
you poor dear boy, even when you are <i>wounded</i> so?”</p>
<p>Barton felt like speaking impolitely again. But
he had command of himself now. Nevertheless
Helen continued to rasp his nerves on more than one
subject. Had he been blessed with another nurse
he would have dictated an answer to Ethel’s letter.
There was a tone to it—a wistfulness which the girl
had been unable to hide—that deeply moved the
wounded lieutenant.</p>
<p>The missive was written before Ethel had been
made assistant manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company;
yet even then she felt the burden of her position
and would have been glad of any bit of kindly advice
he might have sent her. But for three weeks, at
least, he must remain silent. He had never learned
to write with his left hand like Benway Chase.</p>
<p>He proved to be a patient <i>blessé</i>, and both the
physicians and nurses praised him. That he had
come to a French hospital was rather unfortunate, for
Barton’s knowledge of French was slight. He had
to make most of his desires known through Helen
and therefore was at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>She frankly encouraged the appearance of a closer
association between them than was the case. A few
months before Frank Barton would have been delighted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>
at such intimacy with Helen Fuller. But
he was quite aware now of her shortcomings.</p>
<p>Even her association with the Red Cross was a
play. It was a part of her unquenchable desire to
show off all the time. Had Barton been really left to
her small mercies he realized that it would have gone
hard with him. She kept her interest in him as a
patient only because of the romance of their adventure
together at the time of the air raid.</p>
<p>He could not forget how small and light a part she
had played at that time. He hoped that no other
American girl in France would prove herself so great
a coward as Helen Fuller had on that momentous
occasion.</p>
<p>He began to feel a distaste for her glowing beauty—a
beauty of coloring and feature and texture of
skin and hair only, without character or intelligence
looking out of the eyes or showing in the face.</p>
<p>In the warmth of the first few days of their sojourn
at the hospital even so modest a man as Frank Barton
saw plainly that he was being given the opportunity
to declare himself. Helen was waiting for
him to respond to her advances.</p>
<p>When he did not respond she began finally to be
piqued, then angry. She had herself transferred to
another ward. Her absence did not increase Barton’s
temperature, the chart at the head of his cot
remained normal.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>This rift between them was noted and remarked
on by some of the other nurses. At last Helen took
offence, had her mother telegraph her from Paris,
and obtained a furlough and departed from Lovin
without bidding Frank good-bye.</p>
<p>He did not miss her, save in a relieved way. He
had compared her with another girl—another of
whom he had never thought before as other than a
business associate—and found that Helen Fuller was
dwarfed in the comparison.</p>
<p>Thinking of Ethel as he lay in his hospital cot, he
was amazed to discover how much that was really
worth while he knew about her. Important things,
too—individualities and phases of character that now
revealed Ethel Clayton as a girl eminently worthy
of consideration.</p>
<p>The girl he had left behind was all that Helen
Fuller proved not to be. He was confident that
Ethel would not have shown the white feather as
Helen had at the time of the German air raid. No
girl who had so courageously taken up the additional
burden of responsibility in the Hapwood-Diller
Company offices could be a coward in any particular.</p>
<p>The vision of Ethel Clayton grew in his mind. His
thoughts centered about her. He began to wonder
what her attitude would be toward him if he should
go back home and see her again.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>It was not interest in the Hapwood-Diller Company
that was drawing his heart to Mailsburg during
these days. He did not give a fig for business.
His heartstrings were attuned to a much tenderer
emotion. He was gradually beginning to see things
in their proper light.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIV<br>
<small>OPENING THE WAY</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Ethel</span> heard of Barton in several ways during the
next few weeks, but never by personal letter. She
understood the reason for that, however, for Morrison
Copley had quite freely explained the lieutenant’s
wounds and his helpless condition in the <i>Clarion</i>.</p>
<p>“Thank the good Lord ’tain’t his legs nor his eyes,”
Mrs. Trevor said. “When a man can’t see to read
and he can’t get about on his own pins he ain’t no
use to himself, nor to nobody else.”</p>
<p>Ethel did not fail to write to the wounded man,
and that frequently. When these letters should
reach Barton he would learn the particulars of the
important changes in the Hapwood-Diller offices,
and something, too, of Ethel’s troubles and perplexities.</p>
<p>But she had no idea that it was something entirely
different from office news that the hungry-hearted
absentee wished for.</p>
<p>The explanation of the mystery touching Frank
Barton’s wounds and his confinement in the hospital
relieved Ethel’s anxiety to a certain degree. But
there was one thing that seriously pricked her thought<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>
at all times. Helen Fuller was with the wounded
man!</p>
<p>Miss Marble had made Helen’s letter broadly
public. Other people in Mailsburg noted the fact
that Helen’s first patient was the general manager of
the Hapwood-Diller Company. It is the easiest
thing in the world for gossip to put such a two and
two together and make four.</p>
<p>It was remarked that before Barton had gone to
the officers’ training camp at Quehasset he had been
seen much with Helen Fuller. His interest in her
had been noted.</p>
<p>Now the gossips declared their association on the
other side could lead to but one conclusion. Somebody
offered a bet in Ethel’s hearing, two to one,
that there would be a wedding at the American Embassy
in Paris just as soon as Lieutenant Barton was
allowed to leave the base hospital at Lovin.</p>
<p>However, relieved by her knowledge of Barton’s
safety, Ethel Clayton tried to give all her attention
to the task she had accepted when she was practically
hoisted into Barton’s place.</p>
<p>Hammerly and a few of the other directors cheered
her; Grandon Fuller sneered and continued to acclaim
openly that a girl at the head of the business spelled
ruin for the Hapwood-Diller Company.</p>
<p>“Don’t mind that grouch, Ethel,” Macon Hammerly
said. “We’ve put a ring in his nose, and like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>
any other hog he squeals over the operation. But such
squealing never yet did any hurt.”</p>
<p>“It gets on one’s nerves most awfully, just the
same, Mr. Hammerly,” the girl said with a sigh.</p>
<p>She had not, however, come to the old man with
any empty complaint. The labor situation at the
factory was in a critical condition. The spoiled work
being turned back by the inspectors and foremen had
increased twenty per cent. Still the malcontents
complained of low wages.</p>
<p>“To protect the corporation and to answer the
low wage complaint,” Ethel told Hammerly, “I have
certain drastic changes to suggest. I admit they are
diametrically opposed to the system inaugurated by
Mr. Barton; but Mr. Barton did not have the same
difficulties to deal with that we have now.”</p>
<p>“Ain’t it so?” agreed the old man. “In those times,
Grandon Fuller was trying to rope Frank, just as he
afterward noosed Mayberry. Go on, Ethel. You’ve
got good sense, I know.”</p>
<p>“Thank you. At least, I have the interests of
the corporation at heart. If I fail as manager I
lose more than your good opinion, Mr. Hammerly.”</p>
<p>“By Henry! you ain’t goin’ to fail, girl,” cried the
man.</p>
<p>“But I am desperate. Desperate enough to change
the entire system of the factory if the board of directors
will back me. Look at this, Mr. Hammerly.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>She displayed her carefully drawn up plans. The
important change was the shifting from a flat payment
of labor at so much per hour, graduated according
to the skill of the workmen, to a piecework scale
of wages which she had scheduled with the assistance
of Benway Chase.</p>
<p>“I believe it will answer the complaint of low pay.
Our best men will be encouraged to remain with us
instead of going to the munition factories. The
dissatisfied workmen will be those less skilled and
we can the more easily replace them if they leave,”
Ethel explained.</p>
<p>Macon Hammerly’s approval was instant, and with
his backing Ethel’s scheme was sure to be agreed to
by the board. But to put it into force without opposition
was more than could be expected.</p>
<p>The better class of workmen in the factory when
consulted quietly before the posting of the notices,
were eager to give the plan a trial. Many of them
owned their own homes in Mailsburg and had hesitated
to leave their employment at the Hapwood-Diller
factory despite the temptation of higher wages
elsewhere. The chance to increase voluntarily their
incomes by speeding up found favor.</p>
<p>There were incendiary fellows, however, ready instantly
to decry the change. They could see no good
in it. It was a trick on the part of the corporation to
underpay the bulk of the laboring force employed in
the factory.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>This cauldron of trouble continued to bubble and
steam up to the very Saturday before the installation
of the new system of payment. At closing time that
afternoon it was already dark; but many of the workmen
left the factory gate only to remain in the side
street where they milled like cattle on the verge of a
stampede. They talked in noisy groups. There
was something on foot and whether or not they knew
just what it was to be, both the satisfied workmen and
the dissatisfied remained.</p>
<p>An automobile with two sputtering gasoline torches
in it appeared at last and drove slowly through the
noisy crowd to the corner, where it stopped in view
of both the door of the factory offices and of the workmen’s
entrance gate. A burly figure in a greatcoat
and goggles was behind the steering wheel of the car.
In the tonneau was a little, black-haired, foreign looking
man who stood on the seat to speak to the crowd
that at once surged near.</p>
<p>“That is Mr. Schuster!” Ethel Clayton ejaculated,
looking from the office window that best overlooked
the corner. She had remained after the bulk
of the office force had gone; but Mabel Skinner was
with her.</p>
<p>“I don’t know who that one may be,” said the
younger girl, “but it’s Jim Mayberry’s car and that’s
Jim himself all camouflaged up with goggles and a
long coat. Let’s go down there, Miss Clayton, and
listen to what that crazy man’s saying. He waves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>
his arms around like they was unhinged—just the
same as his brain is.”</p>
<p>The girls were about to leave the offices in John’s
care when the street-corner forum convened. Ethel
was worried.</p>
<p>“Is the side gate locked, John?” she asked the porter.</p>
<p>“I don’t s’pose it is yet, ma’am,” he replied.</p>
<p>“Go out and bar it and warn the night watchmen
to be on their guard. Nobody must be allowed to
enter the gate to-night—not even a foreman if one
should return. And be sure the main door is locked
after us.”</p>
<p>“Yes, ma’am,” grinned John. “And will you call
out the military?”</p>
<p>Ethel feared, however, that it might be no laughing
matter. Mabel Skinner was eager to go to the
corner and hear what the man had to say; Ethel
accompanied her, fearing the sharp tongue of the
younger girl would get her into trouble in the rough
crowd.</p>
<p>Schuster was Mr. Grandon Fuller’s personal representative,
Ethel was sure. And Jim Mayberry’s presence
made certain the identity of the influence which
was seeking to stir up trouble for the Hapwood-Diller
Company and its girl manager.</p>
<p>Jim Mayberry caught sight of Ethel almost as soon
as the two girls reached the corner. He turned and
called Schuster’s attention to Ethel. The fox-featured<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>
little lawyer instantly seized the opportunity
for making a point in his speech.</p>
<p>“Here you are, men! You fellows under petticoat
government! Here’s your lady boss come out to
laugh at you. You big, brawny, husky fellows ought
to be proud of yourselves—bossed by a girl! Tied
to her apron strings!”</p>
<p>He added something more vulgar that drew a laugh
from a certain portion of the throng. Jim Mayberry
turned and pushed up his dust goggles, leering into
Ethel’s white and disgusted face. Mabel Skinner
quite lost her self-control.</p>
<p>“You’re in nice work now, ain’t you, Jim Mayberry?”
she scoffed at the former superintendent of the
factory. Then she screamed at the crowding men:
“You big galoots! You goin’ to let that little fice
up there insult a lady like Miss Clayton? And don’t
you see who’s egging him on—and egging <i>you</i> on to
riot and trouble? He’s asking you to pull his chestnuts
out of the fire. It’s Jim Mayberry—Mayberry,
the man that’s sore because the board kicked him out
as superintendent and put Miss Clayton into his
place. Aw, say! You all know Jim Mayberry!”</p>
<p>This raised a laugh which drowned out the lawyer’s
vitriolic words. Mayberry reached for Little Skinner,
his face inflamed and ugly.</p>
<p>“You brat!” he growled. “I’ll teach you——”</p>
<p>He did not finish the remark. As his clutching
hand descended upon the girl’s shoulder a figure<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span>
jumped upon the running board of the automobile
on the other side.</p>
<p>“Beating up a girl would be about your size, Jim
Mayberry!” exclaimed Benway Chase, and with all
the force of his good left arm he struck the former
superintendent of the factory in the face.</p>
<p>Mayberry uttered an oath and swung around.
Benway met him with a second blow—this time landing
on the nose. In a moment the victim’s face was
covered with blood.</p>
<p>“Go it, Bennie! Hit him again!” shrieked Mabel,
jumping up and down in her excitement.</p>
<p>Ethel was horrified; but Little Skinner became the
primitive woman cheering on her particular hero.</p>
<p>Mayberry got up from behind the steering wheel
and cast himself blindly upon the striking Benway.
The latter gave ground, leaping back off the car.
Mayberry plunged after him. In a moment they
had clinched and were down in the street, striking at
each other, Benway silent but Mayberry swearing
and threatening.</p>
<p>It was at this moment that Macon Hammerly
appeared with a policeman. The latter refused to
observe the incipient riot around the two men on the
ground, but stepped up and tapped Schuster on the
arm.</p>
<p>“Hey, you!” he said to the little lawyer, “where’s
your permit?”</p>
<p>“‘Permit?’”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>“Permit to speak on the street ’cordin’ to the city
ord’nance made an’ pervided. Ain’t got none?”
went on the officer. “Come along with me, then,”
and he jerked Schuster off the automobile seat as
though he were a child and started at once down town
with him.</p>
<p>“I reckon,” Hammerly said to Ethel with a grin,
“that Grandon forgot that small point. There almost
always is some vital point, Ethel, that a villain
overlooks.</p>
<p>“Now, you come on with me, girl. There’s something
I want you to be in on. I was coming up
after you when I saw this gang here and sicked the
policeman on to that little Schuster. Come on.”</p>
<p>The whirl of events had quite taken Ethel’s mind off
of Benway Chase and his fight with Mayberry. But
Mabel Skinner had darted around the car, vitally
determined to lend her hero aid if he needed it.</p>
<p>Benway needed no help. Had it been so, there
seemed to be quite a number in the crowd disposed
to be his friends.</p>
<p>“Let the young boss alone,” one said. “It ain’t
beef that counts. The young boss has got the spirit
to lick his weight in wildcats.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Bennie! Oh, Bennie!” burst forth Mabel Skinner.
“Don’t you let that big loafer hurt you!”</p>
<p>“I won’t,” promised Benway, rising quite self-possessed
and scarcely marred by the scrimmage.
“He doesn’t want to fight.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>This seemed quite true. At least, Jim Mayberry
had very quickly got enough. He stood up painfully,
climbed into his car awkwardly, and drove
away, amid the jeers of the onlookers, without even
an additional threat.</p>
<p>The bubble of his reputation as a fighter was
pricked. Some of the older workmen lingering near
mentioned the fact that the ex-superintendent of the
factory had been but a bag of wind after all. “The
young boss,” as they had come to call Benway
Chase, had “licked him with one hand.”</p>
<p>The latter slipped out of the crowd as quickly as
possible. Mabel Skinner was clinging to his good
arm and it was not until they were a full dark block
away from the scene of the disturbance that he discovered
the girl was crying.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Benway,
utterly aghast at the idea of self-possessed Little
Skinner giving way to tears. “Are you hurt?”</p>
<p>“No—no, sir, Mr. Chase. I ain’t hurt.”</p>
<p>“Then why are you crying?” he demanded, snuggling
the girl closer to his side.</p>
<p>“I—I was afraid you might be,” she confessed.</p>
<p>“But, I’m not! That big chump never hurt me a
mite!”</p>
<p>“Then I—I guess I’m crying for joy,” sobbed Mabel.
“If he’d hurt you, Mr. Chase, I guess I’d have <i>died</i>!”</p>
<p>“Huh! Why the ‘Mr. Chase?’ Wasn’t I ‘Bennie’
a while back when you were rooting for me? Why,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>
Mabel, I couldn’t have lost out with you yelling
your head off that way on the side lines!”</p>
<p>“Oh, Bennie!” she gasped.</p>
<p>It was a very dark corner. When they strolled
out into the next circle of lamp light, Benway’s arm
was around the girl’s shoulders and she was looking
up into his face with such an ecstatic expression on
her own that had Boots Skinner seen it he certainly
would have been held fast in his tracks.</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXV<br>
<small>COMPENSATION</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">Macon Hammerly</span> offered no explanation at all
as he led Ethel in the direction of High Street, quite
in the opposite way from her usual walk at this hour
of the evening. But he was pleasantly chatty just
the same.</p>
<p>In spite of his gruffness and homely speech, if he
liked the grain dealer could show a less prickly side
to his character, and he always showed that glossed
side to Ethel Clayton.</p>
<p>“Don’t you make no mistake, girl,” he now observed.
“Your plan is going to have a fair trial,
and we’ll have no such riot scene staged again as that
to-night. Maybe I ain’t got all the political influence
Grandon Fuller blows about; but I’ve got him about
sewed up in a bag and he ain’t going to trouble you—he
nor his hirelings—much more.</p>
<p>“He was trying to pull the wool over Barton’s eyes
when Barton went away, I believe. I trusted to
Frank’s natural horse sense to keep him out of any
scrape with Grandon. But they do say he’s gone and
fallen for that flibbertigibbet daughter of the Fullers.
I expect those nurses have a great advantage over a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>
man. Like enough every one of ’em’ll be married
to some poor sinner before this war’s over,” and he
grinned.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” Ethel gasped. “Maybe I’d
better go as a nurse,” she added, smiling.</p>
<p>“<i>You?</i> Shucks! There ain’t no need for you to
fish. The fellers will all be after you. I’m going to
live ten years longer and dandle two or three of your
babies on my knee. Come on! Here’s where we turn
in.”</p>
<p>He led her into the law office of Alfred Gainor.
The attorney had a visitor who rose hastily to go
when Hammerly, with Ethel behind him, entered the
private office.</p>
<p>“No, don’t run away, Grandon,” said the grain
merchant in his very harshest tone. “I told Gainor
to get you here for just this purpose.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean, Hammerly?” growled the
other. “I have nothing to say to you at present.”</p>
<p>“No, I don’t expect you have. But I’ve got something
to say to you, and you’d best listen.”</p>
<p>“If you’ve come to me to plead for my favor on
this girl’s behalf——”</p>
<p>“Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!” reiterated
Hammerly. “There won’t be no pleading on
our side, I assure you, Grandon. And Ethel’s here
because she’s got a vital interest in what’s going to
be done.”</p>
<p>“I don’t understand you.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>“You will,” observed Hammerly grimly.</p>
<p>“What do you expect to interest me in, man?”
demanded Grandon Fuller with a less ruffled demeanor.</p>
<p>“I’m going to interest you in two or three things,
Grandon,” said the old man composedly, while the
lawyer looked on as though he quite understood.
“I’m going to interest you first of all in the specification
sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company order.
And then I’m going to link that up with a much more
important paper that you ain’t seen for ten years,
but that’s been on file here all that time since it was
probated and recorded. I mean Israel Diller’s will.”</p>
<p>At this statement Grandon Fuller leaped to his
feet and advanced upon the old grain merchant with
inflamed countenance.</p>
<p>“What do you mean, you hoary-headed old scoundrel?”
he shouted. “Do you mean to tell me——”</p>
<p>He halted, licked his thick lips, and his flabby pomposity
began to shrink. Hammerly nodded.</p>
<p>“That’s it. Give a calf rope enough and it’ll hang
itself. I could sit here and bandy words with you
long enough to make you give yourself clean away.
For you ain’t a very brainy villain. Otherwise you
wouldn’t have used a trick the second time that served
you once—and that you had got away with, it seemed,
without raising suspicion.”</p>
<p>“I don’t understand you,” snarled Fuller. “What
are you talking about anyway?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>“I’m talking about forgery, Grandon—forgery and
substitution. The chemists and handwriting experts
are not alone able to swear to changes made on that
Kimberly schedule; they will swear to changes made
in the same way—and by the same hand—in Israel
Diller’s will!</p>
<p>“Sit down, Grandon! Don’t fall down,” advised
Hammerly. “Mr. Mestinger, who drew Israel’s will,
being dead, you substitute your wife’s name for that
of Lorreta Clayton’s all through that instrument and
made Niece Mehitable instead of Niece Lorreta, the
principal legatee under the will.</p>
<p>“I always had suspicions, but no proof. Not till
Ethel, here, showed me that Kimberly company
schedule and pointed out what that boy, Benway
Chase, first saw in it.</p>
<p>“You’re caught, Grandon! You’re caught just as
hard and fast as I caught Boots Skinner the other
night setting hooks in the creek against the law.
I’m going to let Boots go this time, for he ain’t an
all around bad boy. Boots’ testimony is all I needed
to link up your principal henchman with your blackguarding
of the Hapwood-Diller Company. Jim
Mayberry’s a proved scoundrel as far back as that
Bogata Company matter, and I’m going to run him
out of town.</p>
<p>“What I do with you, Grandon, depends entirely
on how much restitution you are willing to make to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>
Widow Clayton and her daughter here. If we go
to law about this it will cost a lot of money—and a lot
of scandal. You’ve made a heap of money one way
and another since you got those shares of the Hapwood-Diller
Company that was meant for Mrs. Clayton.
I’ll give you a chance.</p>
<p>“You’ll give those shares your wife got from the
Israel Diller estate to Mrs. Clayton, with dividends
and accrued interest to date. You’ll sell all your other
holdings of the corporation’s shares to me, <i>and at the
low price which you’ve hammered them down to</i>!”</p>
<p>“W—What! Never!” groaned Grandon Fuller.</p>
<p>“That will automatically put you out of the Hapwood-Diller
Company’s affairs,” went on Macon
Hammerly, not heeding the interruption. “And I
guess that will help some; eh, Ethel?” he continued,
turning to the much interested girl.</p>
<p>“Oh, is it true? Did he tamper with that will?”
cried the girl.</p>
<p>“He did.”</p>
<p>“It’s false! I never——”</p>
<p>“Don’t try to deny it, Grandon. It’s true.” The
old grain merchant strode forward and towered
sternly over the other man. “Come, what is it to
be, a peaceful settlement or war?”</p>
<p>“Gi—give me time to—to think.”</p>
<p>“Time to play another trick, you mean. No, you’ve
got to decide now, at once, right here.”</p>
<p>“You—you are hard. I can explain——”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>“No explanation is necessary. I’ve got you just
where I want you. Will you settle or not?”</p>
<p>Grandon Fuller arose to his feet. He was panting
hard.</p>
<p>“I won’t do it!” he began and then he shrank back
before the steady gaze of Hammerly and Ethel.
“I—I—” He suddenly dropped into his seat, his face
a stricken gray. “Well, have your own way,” he
mumbled. “You’ve got me cornered.”</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVI<br>
<small>HIS AWAKENING</small></h2>
</div>
<p><span class="smcap">One</span> evening, some weeks later, Ethel found herself
alone in the office. It was after working hours and
the others had gone home. She had still to work
late at times; but her plan of wage payment was already
proving successful.</p>
<p>There was a new spirit in the shops. Some of the
old help were coming back for safety, and the possibility
of an increased income with the Hapwood-Diller
Company looked better to the married men, at least,
than a bulky pay envelope and the danger of sudden
death.</p>
<p>In fact, for several weeks, since Grandon Fuller
had been eliminated from the affairs of the corporation,
Ethel had been able to prove her worth to the
board of directors. The business was running
smoothly. The girl had proved that sex was not an
insuperable barrier in the conduct of such a complicated
business as this of which she had charge.</p>
<p>With the help of Benway Chase, who had been
advanced to a minor governing position in the factory,
Ethel was making good. She thought of this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>
cheerfully on this evening as she turned to snap out
the electric light above her desk, the last thing
before going out.</p>
<p>Her hand was stayed by the quiet opening of the
office door. In the half-shadow of the entrance stood
a tall figure, the face of which she could not see.
Nor did she see but one hand when the visitor advanced
into the room and closed the door. Was it
a man with only one arm?</p>
<p>Then she saw that the right arm was bandaged
to his side by a black silk scarf. He was in uniform.</p>
<p>“Mr. Barton!”</p>
<p>“Ethel!”</p>
<p>She was half way to him on flying feet when she
realized what he had called her and how he had
spoken. She halted.</p>
<p>“Mr. Barton! How you startled me! How glad I
am to see you!” she declared. “When did you
arrive?”</p>
<p>“Just now. You are the first person I have seen
to speak to in Mailsburg,” he said, and strode forward
to greet her.</p>
<p>“Your poor arm!” she murmured when she took his
offered left hand. Then she looked up and saw the
grim scar on his brow. It gave an entirely different
expression to his countenance. Indeed he seemed
to be an entirely different man from the Frank Barton
of old. He clung to her hand.</p>
<p>“You—are you back for good? We have needed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>
you so! Now I can give the Hapwood-Diller Company
back into your hands,” she said.</p>
<p>“I am afraid not yet,” Frank Barton replied gently.
“I have only a short furlough—till my shoulder completely
heals. I came across hoping to be of some
small help in recruiting or in Red Cross work while
I am debarred from more active service.”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Barton! you will not really go back
again?” she cried, looking down at her hand still
crushed within his own.</p>
<p>“Unless the war ends very soon,” he laughed. “I
know that you have been more than successful in
my job. Mr. Hammerly wrote me all about Jim
Mayberry and Grandon Fuller. I would not have
believed it of Jim. You have had a hard fight here,
Ethel; but you have overcome, you have succeeded.”</p>
<p>She did not seek to draw away her hand, but still
looked down, refusing to meet his gaze.</p>
<p>“How did you leave the other Mailsburg boys?
Mr. Copley, for instance?”</p>
<p>“Fine!” he declared heartily.</p>
<p>“And Miss Fuller?”</p>
<p>“She and her mother returned on the <i>Lorraine</i>
with me. They were called home, it seems, by Mr.
Fuller’s business troubles. They have lost money,
they tell me, and will have to give up their big house
on the Hill.”</p>
<p>“But that makes no difference to <i>you</i>, of course,
Mr. Barton?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>“Not the least,” he returned composedly. “I
am afraid I shall never become a favorite of Miss
Fuller’s. I could not stand petting while I was in
the hospital at Lovin, and it rather piqued my nurse.”</p>
<p>Ethel looked up at him quickly. There was that
in his eyes she had never seen before. It held her
gaze captive.</p>
<p>His single good hand released her hand. But
gently he drew her toward him, his hand behind her
shoulder. Her form yielded hesitatingly to his urging.</p>
<p>“I cannot claim that patriotism brought me back
for these few weeks that I may remain, Ethel,” he
went on in a voice that suddenly became strangely
husky. “I wanted to see you—face to face.”</p>
<p>There was an awkward pause. She felt his hand
on her shoulder tremble.</p>
<p>“I can’t understand why it is that I never saw
you in just the same light that I have since I’ve
been away. But you have been in my thoughts
continually—the girl I left behind!”</p>
<p>“Oh, of course—the business—” she began flutteringly.</p>
<p>“No, it wasn’t the business, Ethel. It was you!”
he cried.</p>
<p>“Me?” Her breast began to heave and her face
glowed. He bent low that he might catch her eyes.</p>
<figure class="figcenter illowe28_125" id="i_268a">
<img class="w100" src="images/i_268a.jpg" alt="">
<figcaption class="caption"><p class="caption">“You have been in my thoughts continually—the
girl I left behind.”</p>
<p class="right">(<i>See page <a href="#Page_268">268</a></i>)</p></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Yes, you! I guess I was asleep, but I’m awake
now. We were so close day after day—and I was so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>
wrapped up in business—that I didn’t realize how
much you really meant to me.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” It was the faintest kind of an exclamation.
She wanted to speak, but for once the “perfectly
capable person” could not say a word. Her heart
was pounding.</p>
<p>“But it came to me all of a sudden, while I was in
the hospital and while that very fluttery Helen Fuller
was trying to wait on me. Then I realized what a
big difference there was in girls—and I realized that
you were the only girl in the world for me—the
only one!”</p>
<p>Again there was a silence. But now she raised
her eyes to meet his and they were full of glorious
tenderness. He clutched her close to him with his
one good arm.</p>
<p>“I love you—oh, how I love you!” he murmured.
“How I love you!”</p>
<p>“Oh, Mr. Bar——”</p>
<p>“Ethel!”</p>
<p>“Frank, then.”</p>
<p>She spoke his name with such sweetness that it
almost overpowered him. It was as if she had suddenly
lifted the veil and was letting him look into her
very soul. He still held her close. Now he suddenly
kissed her, once, twice and again.</p>
<p>“Thank God!” he said reverently. “Thank God!”</p>
<p>In her soul she also thanked God for His goodness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>
in bringing this man to her. But she could not speak.
She could only cling tightly to him—and for a long
while he felt her heart beating close to his own.</p>
<hr class="tb">
<p>Mrs. Trevor sat in a front seat in her shabby little
hat and Paisley shawl and frankly cried outright
during the ceremony.</p>
<p>“But they’ll make a grand couple,” she sobbed.
“A grand couple—both of ’em so smart!”</p>
<p>Macon Hammerly occupied a seat further back.
He sat with an expression of grim pride on his face,
as though he considered himself in some way the
father of this little romance.</p>
<p>“My young folks—both of ’em,” he whispered to
a neighbor. “Sweetest gal in the world, barrin’ none—an’
a fine fellow, too, believe me!”</p>
<p>Mrs. Clayton was there, of course, dressed in the
best she had ever possessed. She felt like weeping,
but she did not, for was she not a Diller, and had she
not a family pride to maintain? Especially now,
when their financial affairs were so greatly changed?</p>
<p>“Not that I do not consider Mr. Barton a very
fine man,” she confessed. “But I feel that Ethel
might do so much better in a social way if she would
only try. And really a soldier under orders has no
right to marry—especially when he has to go away
so soon. Worst of all, Ethel insists upon retaining
her position as manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>
Well, now that we have such a large amount
in the business perhaps that is as well. The shares
are already at par again.”</p>
<p>Benway Chase was there too and sat close beside
Mabel Skinner—a new Mabel, full of ambition and
who no longer chewed gum.</p>
<p>“Some day we’ll do it too, Mabel,” he whispered.</p>
<p>“Oh, you go on!” she answered, but looked immensely
pleased nevertheless.</p>
<p>The organ pealed forth and slowly the procession
moved down the aisle of the church, the bride leaning
lightly on the groom’s good arm. They came out
into the sunshine of the late winter day and both
Ethel in her veil and Barton in his khaki were glorified
by it. The automobile that was to take them to
the Clayton home was in readiness and they entered it.</p>
<p>“Mine—mine at last!” he breathed, when they
were safe from the eyes of the curious crowd.</p>
<p>“It’s like a dream—it doesn’t seem real!” she murmured,
with eyes that spoke volumes as she beamed
on him.</p>
<p>“Only a week before I have to go to the front
again!” he groaned.</p>
<p>“Let’s not think about that, Frank—let’s think
only about how happy we are.”</p>
<p>“Just as you say, Ethel.” He drew her closer,
glanced hastily around to make sure they were not
observed, and kissed her. “Wonderful, this getting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>
married, isn’t it? Beats business all hollow!” And
he smiled.</p>
<p>She looked at him fondly, and suddenly a mischievous
dimple showed in each cheek. “Well, I
don’t know. If you have a perfectly capable person
for an assis——”</p>
<p>“Ethel! You’ve sprung that on me twice since we
became engaged! Now as my wife you’ve got to
cut it out.”</p>
<p>“What? Cut out being capable? And yet remain
manager while you are away?” And then, as she
saw he was really hurt she added swiftly and tenderly:
“Forgive me, Frank, that’s a dear! I’m so happy—so
furiously happy—I don’t know what I am saying
or doing!”</p>
<p>He held her as close as he dared in such a public
place. “Mine! mine! mine!” he murmured over and
over again.</p>
<p>Very softly she patted the free hand of the wounded
arm. Then she suddenly pressed it to her lips
and kissed it.</p>
<p class="center">THE END</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
<div class="chapter">
<div class="transnote">
<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p>
<p>Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p>
<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p>
</div></div>
<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75475 ***</div>
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