Mr. Drummond followed him into the store, and Joshua accompanied him. He was terribly angry with Walter, and determined to get revenged upon him through his father.
"Are you going to let that beggar pitch into me like that?" he demanded. "He wouldn't have got me down, only he took me at disadvantage."
"Conrad," said Mr. Drummond, "I demand an explanation of your conduct. I come from my house, and find you fighting like a street rowdy, instead of attending to your duties in the store."
"I have already given you an explanation, Mr. Drummond," said Walter, firmly. "Joshua chose to insult me before all the boys, and I don't allow myself to be insulted if I can help it. As to being out of the store, there was no customer to wait upon, and I went to the door for a breath of fresh air. I have never been accustomed to such confinement before."
"You say Joshua insulted you. How did he insult you?"
"I was asked if I would go to the picnic on Saturday afternoon. He didn't wait for me to answer, but said at once that I couldn't come."
"Was that all?"
"On my objecting to his answering for me, he charged me with being a beggar, and said that but for you I would have been obliged to go to the poor-house. If this had been the first time he had annoyed me, I might have passed it over, but it is far from being the first; so I knocked him down."
Mr. Drummond was by no means a partisan of Walter, but in the month that our hero had been in his employ he had found him a very efficient clerk. Whatever Walter undertook to do he did well, and he had mastered the details of the retail dry-goods trade in a remarkably short time, so that his services were already nearly as valuable as those of young Nichols, who received eight dollars a week. Therefore Mr. Drummond was disposed to smooth over matters, for the sake of retaining the services which he obtained so cheap. He resolved, therefore, to temporize.
"You are both of you wrong," he said. "Joshua, you should not have called Conrad a beggar, for he earns his living. You, Conrad, should not have been so violent. You should have told me, and I would have spoken to Joshua."