His change to The Bachelors' was of importance to Wheaton in many ways. He saw here, in the intimacies of their common table, men of a higher social standing than he had known before. Their way of chaffing one another seemed to him very bright; they mocked at the gods and were not destroyed. Raridan was a new species and spoke a strange tongue. Raridan and Wheelock appeared at the table in dinner-coats, and after a few weeks Wheaton followed their example. Raridan, he knew, dressed whether he went out or not, and he established his own habit in this particular with as little delay as possible. The table then balanced, the smelter manager, the secretary of the terra cotta manufacturing company, and the traveling passenger agent of the Transcontinental Railroad appearing in the habiliments which they wore at their respective places of business, and Raridan, Wheaton and Wheelock in black and white.
The humor of this division was not lost on the traveling passenger agent, who chaffed the "glad rag" faction, as he called it, until Raridan took up arms for his own side of the table.
"It may be true, sir, what you say about a division here between the working and non-working classes; but wit and beauty have from most ancient times bedecked themselves in robes of purity. A man like yourself, whose business is to persuade people to ride on the worst railroad on earth, should properly array himself in sackcloth and ashes, and not in purple and fine linen, which belong to those who severally give their thoughts to the,—er—promotion of peace"—indicating Wheelock—"sound finances," indicating Wheaton, "and—er—in my own case—"
"Yes, do tell us," said the railroad man, ironically.
"To faith and good works," said Warrick imperturbably.
"And mostly works,—I don't think!" declared Wheelock.
The relations between Porter and Wheaton were strictly of a business character. This was not by intention on Porter's part. He assumed that at some time he or Thompson had known all about Wheaton's antecedents; and after so many years of satisfactory service, during the greater part of which the bank had been protected against Wheaton, as against all the rest of the employees, by a bonding company, he accepted the cashier without any question. Before Evelyn's return he had one day expressed to Wheaton his satisfaction that he would soon have a home again, and Wheaton remarked with civil sympathy that Miss Porter must now be "quite a young lady."
"Oh, yes; you must come up to the house when we get going again," Porter answered.
Wheaton had seen the inside of few houses in Clarkson. He had a recollection of having been sent to Porter's several times, while he was still an errand boy in the bank, to fetch Porter's bag on occasions when the president had been called away unexpectedly. He remembered Evelyn Porter as she used to come as a child and sit in the carriage outside the bank to wait for her father; the Porters stood to him then, and now, for wealth and power.
Raridan had a contempt for Wheaton's intellectual deficiencies; and praise of Wheaton's steadiness and success vexed him as having some sting for himself; but his own amiable impulses got the better of his prejudices, and he showed Wheaton many kindnesses. When the others at The Bachelors' nagged Wheaton, it was Raridan who threw himself into the controversy to take Wheaton's part. He took him to call at some of the houses he knew best, and though this was a matter of propinquity he knew nevertheless that he preferred Wheaton to the others in the house. Wheaton was not noisy nor pretentious and the others were sometimes both.