“It looks as if we were over the hump,” said Joe one afternoon. “Those are good contracts you landed. I want to show you that I appreciate all you have done. Left to myself I’d have been as helpless as a baby in this business.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wright. “You pick up things pretty fast. I’ve been paid for whatever I’ve done. But apart from that I’ve been with this concern a good many years and your father always treated me well. Funny if I wouldn’t do all I could for you. You’ve come pretty near making good so far. You made the big cut that your father planned to make and you brought the logs down. That’s all he could have done, and I tell you not even Crooks knows the logging business better than he did. So far as showing your appreciation goes it isn’t necessary—or, anyway, that can wait till you are in better shape. I’m not shouting for money the minute I see your head above water.”
“I know you’re not, but at the end of the year we’ll fix things up on a better basis,” said Joe.
While Joe was occupied with his business, Jack was busy, too. Mysterious packages were constantly arriving at Bill Crooks’s home. As the wedding day drew near the patter of these became a downpour. Jack’s friends gave luncheons in her honour, and she was “showered” with articles of alleged usefulness or ornament.
She and Joe, sitting chatting one night in her den, heard the heavy, decided tread of the old lumber baron in the darkened hall. Suddenly there was a stumble, a wrathful bellow, and Bill Crooks’s voice raised in insistent demand for the name of the thus-and-so-forth wretch who left boxes in the hall, mingled with a prophecy as to his ultimate fate.
“What kind of ‘fire’ and ‘nation’ were you speaking of, dad?” asked Jack as he appeared in the door.
“Never mind,” growled Crooks, who was under the impression that his remarks had been sotto voce. “This house is being cluttered up with a bunch of junk. I’ve peeled a six-inch strip of hide clean off my shin. Who left that box out there?”
“I think you did.”
“Hey?”
“I think you did. You took it from the expressman.”