“Would you LIke to learn? Think before you speak.”
Tommy thought. At length he said, “Yes, I would, very much.”
“Think you'd like it?”
Tommy's habit of being honest made him discover that he could not answer either yes or no truthfully. So he decided, as usual when in doubt, to tell the truth. Better to be considered an ass than a liar—easier and safer.
“I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking that in the shop I can learn only what a mechanic thinks of the product, and what the shipping departments think of moving it away. What the buyer thinks, I don't know. So I don't know whether I'd like to be a salesman.”
“They get good money. You'd like that. Think again before you answer.”
Tommy thought. To him money meant only one thing: Not what one hundred thousand dollars, for instance, might buy for him, but what seventeen thousand dollars—no more, no less—would do for his soul's peace. He answered Mr. Thompson slowly:
“I don't know which is the greater pleasure—doing work you really love for fair pay, or making more money out of work you neither like nor dislike. I—I don't know, Mr. Thompson,” he finished, and looked at his chief dubiously.
Mr. Thompson stared into space. “That's so,” he said at last, in a perfunctory way.
Tommy felt he had hit no bull's-eye, but he was neither sorry nor angry. He bethought himself of his bedroom, where he could do his thinking unstimulated and undepressed. He arose and said: