"Aye, so he is, Mary; but you both seem like chits to me."
Grandpa Newman smiled when "Mary" had gone, then shook his head and sighed. The grocer proceeded to wheedle more news out of the village information bureau.
"Who's leaving us now, Dad?" he asked.
"Young Nelson; he's goin' away out here to Mt. Alban to j'in one of them banks."
"You don't say!"
"Yes," drawled the grandsire, "it beats the Old Scratch how these youngsters have got new-fangled idears into their heads. Now, when I was a boy—"
But the observation Mrs. Arling was, a few minutes later, making to Mrs. Nelson, is more to the point:
"My dear Caroline, I just dropped in to tell you how sorry and how glad I am."
Mrs. Arling was fair, round and vivacious. The woman to whom she talked was dark and slender, but also vivacious. The latter smiled.
"It is lonesome, Mary; but you know we can't keep them home forever."
"No, indeed," agreed Mrs. Arling, "that's what I tell my silly old man when he gets to worrying about our boy, who's only twelve. Let them go—they'll be glad to come back."
"It's all very well for you to sit there and act brave," laughed Mrs. Nelson, "but wait till the day arrives."
The force of the argument told on Mrs. Arling.
"Maybe you're right, Caroline," she admitted. "But it must be a great consolation to see Evan enter such a splendid business."
"That is what consoles me, Mary. Banking is such a respectable, genteel occupation!"
The dark woman's eyes were bright; she spoke with great pride.
"You're right, Caroline, it is genteel. Bank boys get into such nice society. And they can always—you know—look so nice!"
"You know, Mary," rejoined the slender woman, "his pa almost repented giving him permission to quit school. Evan was getting along so well. He would have taken both his matric. and his second this summer; but he would go in a bank, and when a vacancy occurred so near home we thought perhaps it would be as well to let him go, in case he should not get so good a chance again."
Mrs. Arling sat in thought.
"Caroline," she said at length, "do you think Evan ever cared much about our girl?"
Mrs. Nelson blushed before one who had been a school-chum.
"I was going to mention that," she said, bashfully.
"You think there is something between them, then?"
"Why, Mary, they are only children. And yet, I often wish that Evan would some day get serious."
"Wouldn't it be lovely!"
The conversation drifted, like ocean-tide, into many fissures and along innumerable channels. The May afternoon ebbed away.
"I really must be going," said Mrs. Arling, suddenly. "Let us know how he gets along. I'm sure the whole town misses Evan, and is proud of him."
Mrs. Nelson smiled fondly.
"And we, too, are proud of Our Banker."
It was the second day of "our banker's" apprenticeship. According to the chronology of homesickness he had been in the banking business about a year. He stood at a high desk in the back end of a dark office, gazing blankly on a heap of letters addressed, or to be addressed, everywhere. An open copying-book lay at his elbow, the pages of which were smeared with indelible streaks. Clerical experts had invented that book for the purpose of recording letters, but Nelson had applied too much water, and the result of his labors was chaos; worse—oblivion.
"Just gaze on that!" cried the teller-accountant, Alfred Castle.
While Alfred gazed a pencil artist might have made a good sketch of him—if the artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner.
"I can't understand how anyone could ball things up like that," he continued.
But assertions seemed incapable of rousing Evan from his stupid lethargy. A question might help.
"Why didn't you stop before you had spoiled the whole bunch?" asked the teller sharply.
Evan swallowed.
"I kept thinking," he stammered, "that each one—"
Castle turned away impatiently, refusing to hear the speaker out. He entered his cage and closed the door, leaving Evan to his nightmare. The manager strolled back through the office.
"Where's Perry?" he asked the new junior.
"Out with the drafts, sir," replied Evan, weakly.
The manager was worthy of description also. He was short, heavy of shoulders and slightly knock-kneed. He was perhaps forty years old, his hair was getting thin, and his dark eyes snapped behind a pair of glasses. Just now, instead of snapping, his eyes twinkled.
"What in thunder have you been trying to do?" he exclaimed.
As he leafed over the pages of the copying-book his mirth came nearer and nearer the surface, until at last he was laughing aloud and with much enjoyment.
"Cheer up," he said, seeing the expression of Evan's face, "we'll let them go this time without re-writing."
Then he showed the young clerk how to copy a letter without spoiling both the letter and the tissue-paper pages.
"Thank you, Mr. Robb," said Evan, earnestly.
While the dainty teller fretted in his cage, like a rare species of wild animal, the manager dug Nelson out of his mess and tried to make light of the disaster.
"We all have to learn," he said kindly.
Sam Robb might have been either a diplomat or merely a good-hearted human being. At any rate, Evan Nelson resolved, after the tone of Robb's words had penetrated, that he would always do his utmost to please the manager.
The return of Porter Perry, alias the "Bonehead," was heralded by loud scuffling over by the ledgers. A string of oaths escaped ("escaped" is hardly the way to express it) the ledger-keeper, William Watson, as Porter approached.
"You——! why didn't you get back here sooner?"
The teller raised his blonde head.
"Enough of that profanity, Watson," he said, peremptorily.
Perry, also called "the porter," dodged Watson, and, muttering a savage growl, shot across the office to the collection desk.
"Here, you," said Mr. Robb, "get busy on this mail. Where have you been—playing checkers in the library or shooting craps on the sidewalk?"
Porter still had his hat on. He took the hint when the manager said, half-mischievously, "Judging by the size of the mail, don't you think you had better stay a while?"
The remainder of the day's work meant confusion and headaches for Evan. Before going to his boarding-house for supper he took a walk by himself along one of the back streets of Mt. Alban. A song his sister used to sing seemed to dwell in the very air about him. It associated itself with home memories and sent a thrill through him.
Mt. Alban was only thirty miles from Hometon, and yet Evan felt that he was gone from home forever. So he was—if he continued to work in the bank. He knew that he would be able to get home only for an occasional week-end; nor were the Hometon trains convenient to bank hours. There was no branch of the bank in Hometon, and he would, consequently, never be located there. When the first move came it would take him still further