A Canadian Bankclerk Part 30

"Loud pedal, Gordon; the inspector's in town."

Filter colored. It must have been quite a relief to his placidly pale face; but his eye caught an unextended balance, and he forgot the offence immediately.

It was six o'clock before Evan had his cash balanced. A money parcel had come in from Toronto, another had to be sent out, and the cash-book had not been able to compare totals until after five.

The inspector and the manager went over to the hotel just before supper, and afterwards to the Penton apartments, where Mrs. Penton had a spread laid for I. Castle.

Three times during inspection Mr. Castle accepted the same invitation.

Evan wondered if Mrs. Penton had woven her charms about the inspector; he thought it quite likely. She would do it for her husband's sake.

Castle, by the way, was a bachelor. One day he held up a bunch of collateral before a head office clerk who was clamoring for permission to get married and said:

"Look at that; if I had married I would not have this bunch of security."

Evan had given up hoping that Castle would favor him with a private interview; in another day the official would be gone, to repeat his tortures on some other unsuspecting branch.

"What do you think of it, Gordon?" asked Henty.

"Of what?"

"It, i-t."

"You mean the inspection?"

"Your foot's asleep--sure; did you think I was talking about the World's Series?"

"I don't mind the extra work," said Filter; "you see, that's the difference between a good man and a b.u.m one."

"Ugh!" said Henty, slapping his own cheek, "Right on the transmitter!"

He turned toward the teller and suggested a walk around the Banfield pond, called a lake.

"It will do you good, Evan," he said.

A few nights' companions.h.i.+p had made the teller and junior chums; had accomplished more in that respect than months of office a.s.sociation had done. Henty sometimes called Nelson "Even." He said he thought the nickname was a good one; in the first place it meant a poetic summer evening; and in the second place it looked like the masculine gender for Eve. The night Henty enlarged on the probable derivation of his friend's name, Nelson laughed Mrs. Terry awake. It was the time of night when anything sounds funny to the one who cannot fall asleep.

Evan liked the big rough-and-ready junior. He looked like a farm-hand, and acted like a young steer; but he was amiable, and had brains, too.

Above all, he was wholesome.

"I'll be with you in a minute, A. P.," said the teller.

They walked along the lakeside. Spring had really come. Crows were flying around aimlessly, early robins piped from a willow where the "p.u.s.s.y-tails" were budding, and a blackbird with glossy neck chirruped unmusically on a stump.

"Don't you ever get the fever to go back on the farm, A. P.?" said Evan.

"This time of year I do. Dad would like me to do the prodigal.

Sometimes I feel like going, too."

"Why don't you go?"

Henty licked his lips--a childish habit of his--and asked innocently:

"Straight, Evan, do you think I'll ever make a banker?"

"I don't know; they say a poor clerk often makes a good manager."

"At that rate," laughed Henty, "I ought to make a peach. Filter says I'm on a par with those market-women when it comes to clerking."

Evan smiled, and picking up a stone threw it out into the lake.

Something in his action interested the junior.

"Darn it," he said, "I don't know why I ever left home. I could have gone through all the colleges in the country if I had wanted to."

"Oh, well," said Nelson, carelessly, "a fellow gets certain experience in the bank that college men know nothing about. They get the baby taken out of them. They have to live in lonesome burgs and make up with uninteresting strangers. I suppose it all helps make a man of them."

"Give us a cig," said Henty; then--"Don't forget the girls, either.

They're a great education."

Nelson was silent: he had graduated from that sort of thing.

"A fellow shouldn't string them, though, Austin," he said, thoughtfully.

To give valuable advice on matters of love one must have experience, but to get experience one must suffer and make others suffer; consequently, love-advice is undesirable from both experienced and inexperienced. In the first instance it makes the adviser inconsistent, and in the second case it is valueless.

"I've made up my mind I'll never trick the dear creatures," said A. P.

"You will if you stay in the bank."

"How's that?"

"Well, for instance, when you leave here, what will become of Miss Munn? You can't marry her till you draw at least one thousand dollars a year. Very soon now head office will be moving you; you'll gradually forget Hilda; you'll have to."

The big junior blushed, licked his lips, and sighed, but made no reply.

For the rest of the walk he seemed sunk in reverie.

Inspection over, Penton walked up and down town where all might see.

When he appeared in the main office his manner was overbearing. He placed heavier emphasis than ever on his "my's," and flattered the mayor to the point of idiocy, and cursed his current account with a vim foreign to his old self.

Then gradually he settled into his chair again. There came a lull in office work, and in general business, for the farmers were seeding.

Penton began to drag at his upper lip. The film over his eyes thickened, and his brooding deepened.

A silent messenger came from Toronto:

"Instruct Mr. E. Nelson to report at our King Street office, Toronto, at once.

"(Signed) I. CASTLE."

The teller was engrossed in work when Penton handed him the letter. He read it dazedly, a moment, then his face glowed with excitement.