“In a sense, you ran some risk in choosing me.”
“I don’t know that I chose you, to begin with,” Fuller answered with a twinkle. “I imagine my daughter made me think as I did, but I’m willing to state that her judgment was good. We’ll let that go. You have seen Jake at his work; do you think he’ll make an engineer?”
“Yes,” said Dick, and then recognizing friendship’s claim, added bluntly: “But he’ll make a better artist. He has the gift.”
“Well,” said Fuller, in a thoughtful tone, “we’ll talk of it again. In the meantime, he’s learning how big jobs are done and dollars are earned, and that’s a liberal education. However, I’ve a proposition here I’d like your opinion of.”
Dick’s heart beat as he read the document his employer handed him. It was a formal agreement by which he engaged his services to Fuller until the irrigation work was completed, in return for a salary that he thought remarkably good.
“It’s much more than I had any reason to expect,” he said with some awkwardness. “In fact, although I don’t know that I have been of much help to Jake, I’d sooner you didn’t take this way of repaying me. One would prefer not to mix friendship with business.”
“Yours is not a very common view,” Fuller replied, smiling. “However, I’m merely offering to buy your professional skill, and want to know if you’re satisfied with my terms.”
“They’re generous,” said Dick with emotion, for he saw what the change in his position might enable him to do. “There’s only one thing: the agreement is to stand until the completion of the dam. What will happen afterwards?”
“Then if I have no more use for you here, I think I can promise to find you as good or better job. Is that enough?”
Dick gave him a grateful look. “It’s difficult to tell you how I feel about it, but I’ll do my best to make good and show that you have not been mistaken.”