"Yes," answered John, without looking up.
"Your desk will be ready at ten."
"Yes, I have been instructed."
"Yes," returned Monroe; and he walked away, with the same mouse-like tread he always assumed among the main office force.
That evening, in his dingy little room, John meditated a long time over this extraordinary turn in his wheel of fate. He could attribute it to no other cause than the incident of the night before. What other reason had Mr. Jarney for selecting him, he thought, for this important post, when there were above him in the office men with more experience, more capabilities, more knowledge of the world of business than he? Could it be, he thought, that Mr. Jarney was repaying him for his gentlemanly actions toward his daughter? Could it be? Mr. Jarney gave no reason for his promotion, nor intimation as to why he favored him above so many others who had been in his service so much the longer time. John never thought that such men as Mr. Jarney give no reason for their actions, except, perhaps, on graver questions.
If it was not for that affair, then what was it? But why should Mr. Jarney favor him for that? He had given Edith Jarney a great amount of compound consideration. He thought of their chance meeting from the viewpoint of one, who, knowing fully his lowly station, could not, by any unheard of reasoning, ever hope to meet her on friendly or intimate terms. He might chance upon her, of course, sometime, somewhere; but that was, while possible, hardly likely—unless it should be in her father's office. But recalling that he had never seen her there, nor ever heard her name spoken in the office no more than if she did not exist, he was still less inclined to a faint hope. Such young ladies were not the topic of confabulating remarks among the employes of such great fathers as hers.
Still, with all his meditating, deliberating, weighing this and balancing that, he could not get her out of his bucolic head. Ah, he thought, he would fill a new position on the morrow! Perhaps she would come to her father's office, sometime; not an improbable thing for Edith to do. Then, in that event, he could only hope to bow to her as she should switch her way in or out past him, with a toss of her dignified head; or a contemptuous look out of her bright blue eyes; or, more like it, to give him a blank stare for his presumptuous ogling.
Would Edith Jarney do this? Dear Edith, it is hoped that John has a wrong impression of you.
So, after thinking on all these things, John could, in nowise, bring himself to believe, or ever to expect that he would receive any recognition from Edith. Therefore, with such extraneous ideas excluded from his thoughts, he concluded that day-dreams were useless; and with all the assumed wisdom that was stored up in his soul, he deliberately cast her aside as beyond his attainment.