Brett hung his head in pleasure and shame. Then he looked Mr. Merriman in the face with a bright smile.
"If you've got to help some private individual, Mr. Merriman, I'd rather you didn't make it me; I'd rather you made it old man Callender. If he goes under now he'll never get to the top again."
"Not Samuel B. Callender?" said Merriman, with a note of surprise and very real interest in his voice. "Is he in trouble? I didn't know. Why, that will never do—a fine old fighting character like that—and besides … why, wouldn't you have thought that he would have come to me himself or that at least he would have confided in my son Jim?"
Brett winced.
Merriman wrote something upon a card and handed it to Brett.
"Can you see that he gets that?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," said Brett.
"Tell him, then, to present it at my office the first thing in the morning. It will get him straight to me. I can't stand idle and see the father of the girl my boy is going to marry ruined."
"I didn't know—" said Brett. He was very white, and his lips trembled in spite of his best efforts to control them. "I congratulate you, sir. She is very lovely," he added.
Mr. Merriman regarded the miserable young man quizzically.