“So did lots of others,” replied Mr. Fletcher, cheerfully. “Yes, I know about it. And I'm not sure but it was a lucky thing for me.” He spoke still more cheerfully, and Jack looked at him inquiringly.
“Are you open to an offer?”
“I'm open to almost anything,” Jack answered, with a puzzled look.
“Well,” and Mr. Fletcher settled back in his chair, “I can give you the situation in five minutes. I've been in this business over thirty years—yes; over thirty-five years. It has grown, little by little, until it's a pretty big business. I've a partner, a first-rate man—he is in Europe now—who attends to most of the buying. And the business keeps spreading out, and needs more care. I'm not as young as I was I shall be sixty-four in October—and I can't work right along as I used to. I find that I come later and go away earlier. It isn't the 'work exactly, but the oversight, the details; and the fact is that I want somebody near me whom I can trust, whether I'm here or whether I'm away. I've got good, honest, faithful clerks—if there was one I did not trust, I wouldn't have him about. But do you know, Jack,” it was the first time in the interview that he had used this name—“there is something in blood.”
“Yes,” Jack assented.
“Well, I want a confidential clerk. That's it.”
“Me?” he asked. He was thinking rapidly while Mr. Fletcher had been speaking; something like a revolution was taking place in his mind, and when he asked this, the suggestion took on a humorous aspect—a humorous view of anything had not occurred to him in months.
“You are just the man.”
“I can be confidential,” Jack rejoined, with the old smile on his face that had been long a stranger to it, “but I don't know that I can be a clerk.”