Evan looked toward the street again.
"I haven't had time to think about it lately. I thought, when they moved me here, that something would turn up in the city. That's one reason why I was so glad to come."
"Well, don't fool yourself," said Watson. "Your work in Banfield will look like kindergarten when you're here a week. And don't have any idle dreams about studying shorthand and typewriting at night; you'll kill yourself if you try it. It isn't possible where fellows work like they have to in a city bank. I imagine they'll shove you on the cash book, where I am now. If they do, good night!"
"Is it written like the town cash book?" asked Evan, turning his attention, from habit, to the work before him.
It is singular how soon a bankboy learns to give work or the discussion of work precedence of everything else. He will go out on the verandah at a party, with some of his confreres, and discuss banking until he forgets the prettiest girl at the dance. He loves to flirt with his work at a distance; at close range it fascinates but does not charm.
Watson laughed briefly.
"The general idea is the same," he said; "but there are a hundred extras. It's the details of the city cash book, and of all other city routine, that get your goat. It's not so much the quality of the work as the quantity that eats you up. Believe me, kid, you're never done."
Realization only comes with contact. Watson led the new man back to the cash-book desk, and proceeded to give him an outline of the work. Evan's vision swayed. At first he was unable to formulate an intelligent question. When he began asking Bill said, apologetically:
"Sorry, kid, I'm not balanced yet. You'll have to take another lesson again. Maybe they won't put you on this post after all. No use of wasting good energy till you have to."
Therewith Bill grappled with his big red-backed book, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left.