“For his grouch. I made him cultivate it, until from being merely a personal pleasure he elevated it to the dignity of an impersonal art. What was only a grouch has become intelligent faultfinding. He is the cantankerous customer on tap, the flaw-picking perfection-seeker, our critic-in-chief. He is a walking encyclopedia of objections, and they have to be good ones. He's a wonder!”
Thompson paused and looked at Tommy doubtfully. Tommy wondered why.
“It used to worry me whenever I thought of that man's family life, so I looked about for a wife for him, and when I found the woman I wanted I married him off to her before he could say Jack Robinson. She is very happy. She is stone-deaf and has borne him two children—both girls. I didn't arrange for their sex, Tommy; honest I didn't; but I prayed for girls! Anyhow, he got them. He'll butt his head against them in vain; they are women and they will be modern women. They will preserve his grouch until he's through living. His usefulness to the company will thus be unimpaired and he'll die in harness, grouchy and an asset to the end. Do you still want to know whether all my Experiments are successful?”
Thompson looked so meaningly at Tommy that Tommy flushed as he answered:
“I don't know whether I can ever do anything to repay you—”
“The company, Tommy,” corrected Thompson, quickly.
“But I know I'd rather work here for five dollars a week than anywhere else for a hundred.”
“That answers your question. Now for your job!” Thompson became so serious that Tommy knew his would be a difficult task. Well, he would do it or die trying!
“Your job is to be the one man in the employ of the Tecumseh Motor Company who can walk into the president's private office at any time without knocking.”
Thompson was frowning so earnestly that Tommy felt a sharp pang of mortification at his own failure to grasp exactly what the job meant. But Thompson went on: