II
Homer Dean and Will Matthews grew up in adjoining back yards, fought and bled with and for each other as boys will, went through high school side by side, took a business course given by a broken-down bookkeeper in a bare room over the Thornton Drug Store, and went to work in the offices of the Hopkins Tool Company within a month of each other, as vacancies occurred there. Will got the first job, Homer the second. They helped with labels in the shipping room, kept checking lists, and eventually graduated to keeping books.
The tool company was a one-man concern. Old Jasper Hopkins had founded it, and intended to turn it over to his boy Charlie when his own time should be done. Old Jasper—he was then no more than in his late forties, but he was Old Jasper just the same—was a man of many eccentricities. He had begun as a mechanic, a machinist; and he had mastered the machinery of the shop, but never mastered the machinery of business. He picked machinists for his shop work, but for the white-collar jobs he chose men with no grime under their finger nails. Who sought a job with him began in the shipping room, and advanced—if he had merit—through regular and accustomed channels. Keeping books was the second rung of the ladder. Jasper could not multiply eight by seven; he had a vast respect for any man who could.
Will Matthews could, and so could Homer Dean. Also they recommended themselves to Jasper in other ways. The head of the Hopkins Tool Company had breathed the dust from his own emery wheels in the past; he was of a gritty and abrading disposition. His nerves were tight, his temper was loose; and to arouse him meant an explosion that resembled nothing so much as the commotion which results when the mainspring of an ancient alarm clock, in process of dissection, is injudiciously set free.
His prejudices were tradition. While Will and Homer were still in the shipping room they heard how he had scorched Charlie Dunn with many words over the mere slamming of a door. And how he had reduced Luther Worthing from salesman to bookkeeper again because Luther faced him one morning with waistcoat half unbuttoned. And how he had summarily discharged Jim Porter for carelessly rumpling the corner of the office rug. Noise he hated, neatness and order he demanded and revered; and more than one office boy had lost his job for scanting his daily task of putting a fresh and spotless blotter on the broad pad upon Old Jasper’s desk.
These likes and dislikes Homer and Will respected; to a legitimate extent they catered to them; and thus they attained a certain eminence in their employer’s eyes. He had been known to refer to them as promising young men. They knew this as well as others did, and there was a good-natured rivalry between them to see which should distance the other on the upward way.