"Ye're all right now," Bridget said, complacently. "Ye've got the job so long as ye can hould it down. I'll give ye the dope about that, and wan thing is always to trate him the way ye've trated him to-day. It's what he wants of us other guys, and we've not got the trick o' handin' it out. Men like us, that's used to a free country, don't pass up no soft talk to no one. What's your name?"
I said it was Jasper Soames.
"Sure that's a hell of a name," he commented, simply. "The byes 'd never get round the like o' that. Yer name 'll be Brogan. Brogan was what we called the guy that was here before Clancy, and it done very well. All right, then, Brogan. Ye'll have Clancy's locker; and moind ye don't punch the clock a minute later than siven in the mornin', or that little ould divil 'll be dancin' round to fire ye."
So Brogan I was at Messrs. Creed & Creed's all through the next two years.
CHAPTER V
No lighter-hearted man than I trod the streets of New York that evening. I had breakfasted in the morning; I had shared Bridget's cold meat and bread at midday; I could "blow myself in" to something to eat now, and then go happily to bed.
There was but one flaw in this bliss, and that was the thought of Mildred Averill. Whether she would be glad or sorry that for the minute I was landing on my feet, I could not forecast. And yet when I called her up she pretended to be glad. I say she pretended, only because in her first words there was a note of disappointment, perhaps of dismay, though she recovered herself quickly.
"But I can be easy in my mind about you?" she asked, after I had declined to tell her what my new occupation was.
"Quite easy; only I want you to know how grateful I am."
"Oh, please don't. If I could have done more!"