Robb and Key looked at one another, the assistant accountant gone, then burst out laughing simultaneously. Evan joined them.
"There you are," said Robb, turning to the cash-book man; "that's the kind of things the bank soaks you for. They've got a pick against you, Nelson. I have a hunch you and I'll be left out on the increases."
The ex-manager's hunch was not quite strong enough. Evan received an increase of $50, bringing his salary up to $400 per year, less guarantee premiums. Robb was cut down from $1,400 to $1,250, "until he manifested a willingness to accept what head office considered to his interests."
Robb had refused, for personal reasons, to accept an appointment to a place of ostracism, and that, along with the ill-will of the accountant and assistant-accountant of Toronto, was sufficient, in the eyes of head office, to justify the cutting down of his salary $150. It had been reduced $750 when he was first sent to Toronto—after more than twenty years' faithful service.
Sam Robb, that night at dinner, looked like a man who had been through a severe illness. He ate little.
"They want me to resign, Evan," he said gutturally, "or they wouldn't have chopped me again. A nice way of squeezing a fellow out, eh?"
"What are you going to do about it?" asked Evan.
"Get drunk," said Robb.
He did, too.