Nan, intent upon catching some hint of the nature of Eaton’s reception, merely murmured her mild pleasure in this news. She was satisfied, from the calm that reigned above, that Eaton had begun well, and that under the spell of his presence Farley would soon be restored to tranquillity.
“Sorry Mr. Farley is having a bad time,” Jerry went on, thinking the invalid’s outbreak required at least a passing reference. “You know down at the store the boys still talk about him. Somebody’s always telling how he used to do things, and the funny things he used to say. When I first struck the plant, he used to scare me to death, sticking his nose in the shipping-room without notice and catching the boys larking. Once I had gone to the mat with a plumber that was looking for a gas-leak, and the boss came in and got us both by the collar and threw us down the stairs like a pair of old shoes. I thought I was a goner for sure when he sent for me to come to the office that night and asked me who started the trouble. I told him the plumber said whenever he found gas-leaks in jobbing houses he always reckoned somebody was getting ready to collect the insurance. Uncle Tim—that’s what the boys call him—asked me if I’d hit him hard, and I told him I guess he’d have considerable business with the dentist, all right. Just for that he raised my wages a dollar a week! Say, can you beat it!”
He snapped his fingers and shook his head impatiently.
“Isn’t that rank—just after Cecil lectured me all the way up here about cutting out slang! I promised him solemnly before we started that I wouldn’t say say; and here I’ve already done it! How do you learn to talk like white folks, anyhow? I suppose you got to be born to it; it must be like swimming or rowing a boat, that you learn once and always catch the stroke right.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Nan consolingly. “I use a good deal of slang myself; and at school my English teacher said it wasn’t such a sin if we used it as though we were quoting—we girls held up two fingers—so!”
“That sounds reasonable, all right; I must tell my noble knight about that. It seems sometimes as though I just couldn’t get a ball over the plate—there I go again! And Cecil warned me specially against talking like a bleacher hoodlum when we got here.”
“Oh, that’s not worth bothering about. I’m so glad to see you that I could cry for joy. If you hadn’t come when you did, I don’t know what might have happened.”
He had been trying to direct the talk into other channels, and her remark puzzled him. That this wholly charming, delightful Nan could have given her benefactor cause for the objurgations he had heard poured out upon her was unbelievable. Still, it was rather pleasant than otherwise to find that she was human, capable of tears, and it was not less than flattering that she should invite his sympathy.
“Well,” he began cautiously, “I guess we all have our troubles. Life ain’t such an easy game. You think you’re sailing along all right, and suddenly something goes wrong and you’ve got to climb out and study astronomy through the bottom of the machine. Why,” he continued expansively, finding that he had her attention, “when I first went on the road I used to get hot when I struck some mutt who pulled lower prices on me or said he was over-stocked. But you don’t sell any goods by getting mad. I picked up one of these ‘Keep Smiling’ cards somewhere, and when I got blue I used to take a sneaking look at it and put on a grin and tell the stony-hearted merchant the funniest story I could think of and prove that our figures f.o.b. Peanutville were cheaper, when you figured in the freight, than Chicago or Cincinnati prices. I’ve made a study of freight tariffs; I can tell you the freight on white elephants all the way from Siam to Keokuk and back to Bangkok. I’ve heard the old boys down at the store talk about Farley till I know all his curves. Farley’s all right; there’s nothing the matter with Uncle Tim; only—you don’t want to shift gears on him too quick. You’ve got to do it gentle-like.”
Nan smiled forlornly, but Amidon was glad that he could evoke any sort of smile from her.