Mr. Claybourne shook his head slowly. "Ted, you are going to get some hard knocks some day. The world isn't run the way you think it is. And I don't mean any discredit to Knowlton, either. It would only be sound sense for him to jump at a better offer."
My faith in Knowlton was unshaken, but I turned Mr. Claybourne's words over in my mind. "If that is an objection," I said at last, "I'll cable my father to give Knowlton an interest in the business."
"You ought to have done that long ago," replied Mr. Claybourne. "Well, Ted, I'm sorry I can't encourage you. Coming to dinner tonight?"
From Mr. Claybourne's factory I walked straight to the telegraph-and-cable office. "Do it now, as Knowlton would say," I smiled to myself as I walked along the street. It was quite a different thing for me to walk along Deep Harbor's streets now from what it had been the first few months. It almost seemed as if half the persons I met knew me. "Hello, Ted!" passing men would call with cheery friendliness—from the barber at the Otooska House to the president of the country club, I was "Ted." Young ladies waved friendly hands at me from front porches, or would ask after Helen as I went by. It was a curiously intimate town, where men often fought each other bitterly in business and played golf together afterwards at the country club. We had no secrets from each other, and the young people wandered in and out of each other's homes as into clubs. It was a frightfully public way to live, and yet not unpleasant.
There was a special free masonry among the men. They knew each other's financial standing and bank account down to the last cent. They also knew each other's business capacity and reliability with astounding accuracy. One heard at the club startlingly frank revelations about all that was going on, and nothing that happened remained long unknown or undiscussed. There were some things talked about which did not reach the ears of the women—whom So-and-so visited on his last trip to New York, for example. The men knew and laughed at much that their code kept from their wives. On the whole, Deep Harbor was a reasonably moral place, in spite of much cocktail drinking and free and easy manners. But there were a few notorious exceptions. And others, less notorious, indulged in occasional flings in distant towns. I never heard of any "prominent citizen" who kept a double establishment in Deep Harbor. A double life there meant a train journey. An actual local scandal was a six months' wonder and carried with it almost complete ostracism to boot. We had had a few famous divorces, but none during my time.
I was thinking of all this as I walked to the telegraph office on State Street. The greetings along the way had started me on my train of thought. I was a long time wording my cable to my father and still longer reducing it to a business code. A cable or telegram in plain language was not advisable. Deep Harbor knew everything, even the secrets you sent or received by wire. I had been casually questioned more than once about sending messages in code. One advantage of so thoroughly transparent a glass house was that no one cared particularly about casting stones. The infinite gossip of the men, while frank and outspoken in its opinions, was rarely malicious. It was simply that a naked truth, deprived of the last fig leaf, circulated concerning every one.
"All right, Mr. Jevons," said the telegraph girl, as she took my coded message. "Charge it to the company?"
"No—personal," I answered. Knowlton had a way of making me account for every cable. A company cable had to have a copy filed at the office.
"Shall I 'phone an answer out to the Claybournes'?" she asked, as if it were a perfectly ordinary matter for her to have an intimate knowledge of my evening movements.
"Yes," I said, for one got accustomed to Deep Harbor's ways, "but make certain you give the reply to me in person. Do not leave a message or 'phone it to any one else in the house."