"Hello! You nearly knocked me down, Stoker. Where are you going?" It was one of the factory boys who asked the question, and Alec, hurrying down the street with unseeing eyes, became suddenly aware that he had run against some one who had caught him by the arm, and was laughingly shaking him to make him answer. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, I don't know, and I don't care," was the reckless answer.
"All right, come along if you want good company," was the joking reply, and the other boy, slipping his arm in Alec's, turned his steps to a corner where a jolly crowd were waiting for him to join them.
After that there were no more lonely evenings for Alec, when he sat with bowed head beside his table, staring into vacancy. He should have had another promotion in March. Alec felt that he was proficient enough to be advanced, and he told himself bitterly that the reason he was not was because the manager mistrusted him.
It was true that the manager did distrust him. Not on account of the suspicions which Ralph Bently had sowed broadcast, but because, made doubly watchful by the hint, he discovered how Alec was spending his evenings. Although the work in the factory was done as well as ever, he knew that no one could keep the company and late hours that Alec did and not fall short of the high standard he had set for the one who was ultimately to become his assistant.
The months slipped slowly by. Philippa wrote that the garden was gay with spring crocuses and snowdrops; then that Ridgeville had never been such a bower of roses as it was that June. But to Alec the months were marked only by his little winnings and little losings.
There came a time in the early autumn when Alec crept up the creaking stairs to his room, haggard and pale in the gray light of the breaking dawn. He had been out all night and lost not only all the money he had put away in the bank, the savings of seven endless months, but he was in debt for a greater sum than all his next month's salary would amount to.
Heavy-eyed and dizzy from the long hours spent in the close little gambling den, reeking with stifling tobacco smoke, Alec dragged himself to his room. After he had closed the door, he stood leaning with his back against it for a moment. He was facing two pictures that gazed at him from the mantel: One was the patient, wistful face of his Aunt Eunice; the other was Philippa's, looking straight out at him with such honest, sincere eyes, such eager questioning, that he could not meet their clear gaze. He strode across the room and turned both faces to the wall. Then, without undressing, he threw himself on the bed with a groan.
He was late reaching the factory that morning, for he fell asleep at once into a sleep of exhaustion, so deep that the usual sounds did not arouse him. As it was his first offence, the foreman passed it by in silence; but, faint from lack of food (there had been no time for breakfast), worn by the excitement and high nervous tension of the night before, he was in no condition to do his work. He made one mistake after another, until, made more nervous by repeated accidents both to the material and machinery he was handling, he made a blunder too serious to pass without a report to the manager. It involved the loss of considerable money to the company.
"You'll be lucky if that mistake doesn't give you your walking papers," said the foreman. "You'll hear from it at the end of the month."