The Brimming Cup

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

But here was a new variety to him, these frank and familiar glances thrown in answer to the nodded greeting or short sentence of the boss as he walked about. They were not so much friendly (although they were that too), as they were familiar and open, as though nothing lay hidden behind the apparent expression. It was not often that Mr. Welles had encountered that, a look that seemed to hide nothing.

He wondered if he could find out anything about this from Mr. Crittenden and put a question to him about his relations with his men. He tried to make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he said the words, he knew just how flat and parlor-reformerish they sounded; and it didn't surprise him a bit to have the business-man bristle up and snap his head off. It had sounded as though he didn't know a thing about business—he, the very marrow of whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the only thing that could keep it going was the fear of death in every man's heart, lest the others get ahead of him and trample him down.

He decided that he wouldn't say another thing, just endure the temporary boredom of being trotted about to have things explained to him, which he hadn't any intention of trying to understand.

But Mr. Crittenden did not try to explain. Perhaps he was bored himself, perhaps he guessed the visitor's ignorance. He just walked around from one part of the big, sunshiny shops to another, taking advantage of this opportunity to look things over for his own purposes. And everywhere he went, he gave and received back that curious, new look of openness.

It was not noisy here as in the saw-mill, but very quiet and peaceful, the bee-like whirring of the belts on the pulleys the loudest continuous sound. It was clean, too. The hardwood floor was being swept clean of sawdust and shavings all the time, by a lame old man, who pottered tranquilly about, sweeping and cleaning and putting the trash in a big box on a truck. When he had it full, he beckoned to a burly lad, shoving a truck across the room, and called in a clear, natural, friendly voice, "Hey, Nat, come on over." The big lad came, whistling, pushed the box off full, and brought it back empty, still whistling airily.

There were a good many work-people in sight. Mr. Welles made a guessing estimate that the business must keep about two hundred busy. And there was not one who looked harried by his work. The big, cluttered place heaped high with piles of curiously shaped pieces of wood, filled with oddly contrived saws and lathes and knives and buffers for sawing and turning and polishing and fitting those bits of wood, was brooded over as by something palpable by an emanation of order. Mr. Welles did not understand a detail of what he was looking at, but from the whole, his mind, experienced in business, took in a singularly fresh impression that everybody there knew what he was up to, in every sense of the word.

He and Mr. Crittenden stood for a time looking at and chatting to a gray-haired man who was polishing smoothly planed oval bits of board. He stopped as they talked, ran his fingers over the satin-smoothed surface with evident pleasure, and remarked to his employer, "Mighty fine maple we're getting from the Warner lot. See the grain in that!"

He held it up admiringly, turning it so that the light would show it at its best, and looked at it respectfully. "There's no wood like maple," he said. Mr. Crittenden answered, "Yep. The Warner land is just right for slow-growing trees." He took it out of the workman's hand, looked it over more closely with an evident intelligent certainty of what to look for, and handed it back with a nod that signified his appreciation of the wood and of the workmanship which had brought it to that state.

There had been about that tiny, casual human contact a quality which Mr. Welles did not recognize. His curiosity rose again. He wondered if he might not succeed in getting some explanation out of the manufacturer, if he went about it very tactfully. He would wait for his chance. He began to perceive with some surprise that he was on the point of quite liking Mrs. Crittenden's husband.

So he tried another question, after a while, very cautiously, and was surprised to find Mr. Crittenden no longer snappish, but quite friendly. It occurred to him as the pleasantest possibility that he might find his liking for the other man returned. That would be a new present hung on the Christmas tree of his life in Vermont.