“No, ma’am, I cannot,” said Guy, reddening. “I have no money.”
“But you draw your quarter’s salary to-day, do you not?”
“No, ma’am. I haven’t a cent due me from the firm. I know this ought to have been paid long ago, Mrs. Willis, and I am sorry indeed that I have kept you waiting. I will hand you the very first dollar I get.”
It was plain that the landlady’s heart was not in the business. She had undertaken it merely from a sense of duty, and having, as she believed, fulfilled that duty, she was ready to drop the board bill and talk about something else.
After a few commonplace remarks about the weather, and the lively appearance of the streets, she bowed pleasantly to Guy and went out.
The clerk, feeling like a criminal, walked slowly back to the book-keeper’s desk, but scarcely had he reached it when he was informed that there was another visitor waiting to see him in the front part of the store.
This time it proved to be a gentleman—one of the clerks in the employ of the tailor he patronized so extensively. He shook Guy cordially by the hand, asked him how business was prospering, and produced a bill from his pocket-book.
“That’s the way you stand on our books,” said he, “and I thought I would drop in and see how you were fixed,” a slang expression for “see if you had any money.”
The clerk beat a tattoo with his fingers on the counter, whistled “Dixie,” and run his eyes about the store as if he were taking a mental inventory of the stock. He had been told by his employer that he might find it necessary to give Guy a good talking to, and he was screwing up his courage.
“Eighty-seven dollars!” exclaimed Guy, as he run his eye over the bill. “Impossible! The last time I spoke to Mr. Warren about my account he told me it was only fifty dollars.”