"By the way," asked his father, "how did you spend your last?"
"Working," said Evan.
The mother sighed softly.
"You look as though that's all you ever did," continued Mr. Nelson.
"Oh, no," said Evan, promptly, "I've had some good times since that Sunday, a year and a half ago, that I spent here. I have had it sort of tough lately and maybe I'm a little run down, but things will ease off after awhile."
It is characteristic of the bankman that he lives on the hope that work will fall off. Someone is always telling him, as he is always telling himself, that things will slacken; but, somehow or other, the strings stay taut.
Evan was quite a different lad now from the schoolboy who first came home with bank idioms to tickle his mother with and dumfound his sister. As he sat at the Christmas breakfast table his countenance was subdued, almost worried. The long balance-night orgies were registered there; the fixed expression that comes from searching out differences and the strain that accompanies each day's balancing of the cash. Something more as well—debts!
All bankclerks contract debts. The careless ones do so thoughtlessly, the careful ones reluctantly—both necessarily. Evan owed about sixty dollars, tailor and other bills. A bankclerk must make a good impression on people; he must have a good appearance—head office makes that its business. The clerk's salary—that is nobody's business, not even his own. Evan did not mention the fact that he was in debt, when his father asked, good-humoredly,
"Making much money?"
"I'm living," smiled the son.