“I've been saving for three years, sir, and if I can know I'm a permanency—if I can keep this place—”
“You're going to keep it all right,” Tembarom cheered him up with. “If you've got an idea you're going to be fired, just you forget it. Cut it right out.”
“Is—I beg your pardon, sir,” Pearson asked with timorous joy, “but is that the American for saying you'll be good enough to keep me on?”
Mr. Temple Barholm thought a second.
“Is 'keep me on' the English for 'let me stay'?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we're all right. Let's start from there. I'm going to have a heart-to-heart talk with you, Pearson.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Pearson in a deferential murmur. But if he was not dissatisfied, what was going to happen?
“It'll save us both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't know. I couldn't deceive a setting hen or a Berlin wool antimacassar.”
Pearson swallowed something with effort.