"I shall tell Mrs. Fisher, and beg her to come right down here," determined Charlotte Chatterton to herself, "just as soon as I get in the house. That is exactly what I shall do," she declared savagely, as Mr. Higby whipped up the mare for the quarter-mile drive to the little station.
CHAPTER XVII.
JASPER.
"Halloo, King, Mr. Marlowe wants you." Jasper, his hands full of papers, hurried down the long warehouse, through the piles of books, fresh from the bindery, stacked closely to the ceiling. The busy packers who were filling the boxes, looked up as he threaded his way between them. "Mr. Marlowe is down there," indicating the direction with a nod, while the hands kept mechanically at their task.
"I want to see you about that last lot of paper," Mr. Marlowe began, before Jasper had reached him; "it is thin and of poorer quality than I ordered. The loss must be charged back to Withers & Co."
"Is that so?" exclaimed Jasper. "They assured me that everything should be right, and like the sample that we ordered it from."
"And Jacob Bendel writes that the edition we gave him of History of
Great Cities to print will be shipped to us within a fortnight, when
his contract was to be filled on Thursday. Of course we lose all the
Chicago orders by this delay."
"What's the reason?" asked Jasper, feeling all the thrill of the disappointment as keenly as if he were the head of the house.
"Oh! a strike among the printers; his best men have gone out, and he's at the mercy of a lot of inferior workmen who are being intimidated by the strikers; but he thinks he can get the edition to us in ten days or so."
Mr. Marlowe leaned against an empty packing case and viewed the assistant foreman of the manufacturing department calmly, with the air of a man to whom disappointments were in the usual order of things.