"Ledger."
This was the first time Evan had had one of the bank's chief shortcomings brought home to him—it makes little difference what a clerk's intelligence or what his position and responsibility, he will be paid according to the time he has served. He is not rewarded according to his works, but paid for length of service. The business offers no incentive to excel. Why work hard and honestly if you are going to get the dead-level wage each year anyway? Good clerks suffer because of the negligence of indifferent ones; but the former bring up the average of work—and that is all the bank cares. The staff of a bank is something to be worked en masse; the individual is an insignificant part of the works.
Perry seemed fated to be a humiliation to Evan. Bank luck had thrown the Bonehead into the spot where Evan longed to be, and had given him enough salary to live on, humbly. But more ironical still was the apparent attachment between Evan's old girl and Perry.
"If she could only have seen him balancing that savings in Mt. Alban," thought Evan, smiling. Then puffing out a mouthful of smoke, he murmured: "Bah! what do I care!"
From that moment he was jolly, to the point of humor. It was the mood of mixed feelings, prominent among which is jealousy, where one waxes jocose in spite of himself. Evan even rallied Frankie on certain personal matters. She did not take it amiss; it rather relieved the situation for her.
"Where's Bill, do you know, Evan?" asked Porter.
"No; his signature at Mt. Alban has been cancelled, but I don't know what they did with him."
"Either resigned or gone to a city," Perry supposed.
"I think we had better go, Mr. Perry," said Frankie, turning away from Lou's Christmas gifts.
"Why, what's your hurry—won't you stay for dinner?" asked Mrs. Nelson.