"We have given you many chances, Kennedy," he rejoined. "If it rested with me, I would give you another. But it doesn't rest with me—it rests with that necessary person. Example. What would the men say if I treated you as a privileged person? You know that the work could not go on. For the present, at any rate, you are suspended. I must see my directors and take instructions from them. Now, really, Kennedy, don't you think that you have been very foolish?"
"I suppose so, sir. That's what foolish people generally think. It must make a lot of difference to you whether a man comes at six or seven, even if he does a good deal more work than the early ones. I could do what you ask me to do in three hours a day. That's what puzzles me."
The amiable Mr. Tucker was up in arms in a moment.
"Now, come, I cannot discuss abstract propositions with you. Our hours are from six to six. You do not choose to keep them and, therefore, you must go. When you are a little more practically inclined, I will speak to the directors for you. You may come and tell me so when that is the case."
"I shall never come and tell you so, sir. I wish that I could—but it will never be the truth. The work that I could do for you is now what you want me to do. I am sure it is better for me to go, sir."
"Then you have something in your mind, Kennedy?"
"So many things, sir, that I could fill a book with them. That is why I am foolish. Good-by, Mr. Tucker. I suppose you have all been very kind to me—I don't rightly understand, but I think that you have. So good-by and thank you."
The discreet manager took the outstretched hand and shook it quite limply. There had been a momentary contraction of the brows while he asked himself if astute rivals might not have been tampering with this young fellow and trying to buy the firm's secrets. An instant's reflection, however, reassured him. Alban had no secrets worth the name to sell, and did he possess them, money would not buy them. "Half mad but entirely honest," was Mr. Tucker's comment, "he will either make a fortune or throw himself over London Bridge."
Alban had been quite truthful when he said that he had many things in his mind, but this confession did not mean to signify a possibility of new employment. In honest truth, he had hardly left the gates of the great yard when he realized how hopeless his position was. Of last week's wages but a few shillings remained in his pocket. He knew no one to whom he might offer such services as he had to give. The works had taught him the elements of mechanical engineering, and common sense told him that skilled labor rarely went begging if the laborer were worthy his hire. None the less, the prospect of touting for such employment affrighted him beyond words. He felt that he could not again abase himself for a few paltry shillings a week. The ambition to make of this misfortune a stepping-stone to better things rested on no greater security than his pride and yet it would not be wholly conquered. He spent a long morning by the riverside planning schemes so futile that even the boy's mind rejected them. The old copybook maxims recurred to him and were treated with derision. He knew that he would never become Lord Mayor of London—after a prosperous career in a dingy office which he had formerly swept out with a housemaid's broom.