“Don’t be afraid; I’ll see that you don’t get scolded! You just strut around the house and make the most of your success—for that’s what it is! Mr. Trenton told me he was sure your improvements were enormously important—greater efficiency, greater economy of operation and every other little old thing you’ve thought up in that dear bean of yours!”
“Trenton’s a fine man. He’s been mighty nice to me,” said Durland. “It’s a pleasure to talk to a man who catches an idea so quick. I guess Kemp does pretty much what he says. I don’t know Kemp. I never thought of it till after the break, but Cummings never wanted me to meet other manufacturers in our line. Guess he didn’t trust me,” he ended with a grim smile. “Afraid I might get away from him before he was sure I’d petered out.”
“He guessed wrong, daddy! We’ll let Cummings do the worrying now.”
On the day he closed his shop in the Power Building and moved to the experimental room that had been fitted up for him at Kemp’s big plant Durland mentioned his new prospects at the supper table. He made the disclosure so slightingly that Mrs. Durland and Ethel, who had been busily discussing the merits of a novel they had been reading and Ethel thought grossly immoral, failed to catch the point of the revelation until he had cleared his throat and announced for a second time that he was moving out to Kemp’s to do a little experimenting.
“I guess that’s yours, Allie,” he remarked, producing the check. “Got it for an option on a patent I’ve been tinkering at. Trenton, that Pittsburgh expert, recommended it to Kemp.”
“Trenton?” repeated Ethel, carefully scrutinizing the Kemp Manufacturing Company’s check before passing it on to her mother.
“Yes; Ward Trenton,” Durland replied with a note of pride that so distinguished an engineer had recognized his merits. “He keeps track of everything that goes through the patent office for clients he’s got all over the country. I’m going to build some of my motors at Kemp’s; they’ve given me a lot better place to work in than I used to have at Cummings’s, and I’m going to have all the help I want. And I’m to draw two hundred a month while I’m there. I guess that’s fair enough.”
“This is your friend, Trenton, is it, Grace?” asked Ethel, awed into respect by the size of the check.
“The same,” Grace replied, carelessly meeting Ethel’s gaze across the table. “He’s the kindest man imaginable. You can hardly complain of his treatment of father.”
“I’ve always believed in father,” said Ethel. “I hope Isaac Cummings will see in this a retribution—God’s punishment for the way he treated father.”