While I was reading those New York papers, Jack Ridley was smoking a cigar at the opposite side of the breakfast-table. When I had finished, I spoke. “Did you see that newspaper yesterday?” I demanded, my rage hardly able to wait upon his answer before bursting.
Ridley nodded.
“And Burridge?”
“Yes—he saw it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Bad news will always keep.”
I shouted for Burridge, and, when he came, ordered him into a seat. “At every step in my career I’ve been harassed and hampered by petty minds,” I said—“not among my enemies, for there they have been a help, but among my employees and servants of every kind. How often have I told both of you never to think for me? I don’t pay you to think—I pay you to do what I think. Had you told me I could have met this slander when and where it showed itself and would have choked it to death. As it is, everybody except you two believes I knew and was silent. Fortunately my reputation is strong enough to compel them to put a decent interpretation on my silence. But no thanks to you! I discharge you both.”
Burridge rose and went to the other part of the car—and I did not see him again. Ridley fell to whimpering and crying, and for old friendship’s sake, and because the poor devil is useful in his way, I took him back at two-thirds his former pay. His gratitude was really touching—sometimes I think he’s honestly fond of me, though no doubt the wages and what he has free enter into it. He’s one of those fellows who actually enjoy licking the hand they fear. Burridge did not try to get himself reinstated. Probably he thought himself indispensable and held aloof in the belief that I would beg him to come back. But I was on the whole glad to get rid of him. He was too much of an alleged gentleman for the work he had to do. There’s room for only one gentleman in my establishment.
Into his place I put a young chap named Cress who had been near me at the office for several years and had shown loyalty, energy, and discretion. He was not at his new work a week before my wife came to me in a hot temper and demanded that he be dismissed. “He has insulted me!” she said, her head rearing and her nose in the air.
“How?” I asked; “I can’t discharge a faithful servant on a mere caprice.”