“Well, I’m likely to spend a good deal, from now on. The boss has been shaking things up again, and he called me in by telephone yesterday and changed my job. That’s the way with him; he won’t show up sometimes for six weeks, and then he gets down early some morning and scares everybody to death.
“I thought I was settled on the road for the rest of my life, and now he’s made a job for me to help the credit man—who doesn’t want me—and take country customers out to lunch. A new job made just for my benefit. And all because of a necktie Cecil gave me. The boss saw me sporting it one day and asked me where I got it. I had to make a show-down, and he thought I was kidding him. You see Cecil’s about the last man he’d ever think of giving me presents. If I’d laid that necktie on any other living human being, it wouldn’t have cut a bit of ice; but when I said, as fresh as paint, ‘John Cecil Eaton picked that up in New York for me,’ he laughed right out loud. ‘What’s the joke?’ I asked him; and he says, ‘Oh, Eaton never gave me any haberdashery, and I’ve known him all my life.’ And like the silly young zebra I am, I came back with, ‘Well, maybe that’s the reason!’ You’d have thought he’d fire me for that; but it seemed to sort o’ make us better acquainted. He’s the prince, all right!”
She had been trying, more or less honestly, to put Copeland out of her mind. Her knowledge of him as a business man had been the haziest; one never thought of Billy Copeland as a person preoccupied with business. She was startled when Amidon asked abruptly:—
“Of course, you know the boss?”
It was possible that Amidon had heard the gossip that connected her name with his employer’s, and she answered carelessly:—
“Oh, yes; I know Mr. Copeland.”
“I guess everybody knows William B.,” said Amidon. “He’s got the pep—unadulterated cayenne; he isn’t one of these corpses that are holding the town back. He’s a live wire, all right.”
Then, realizing that he had ventured upon thin ice in mentioning Copeland, he came back to shore at once.
“Cecil said that this being my first call, about thirty minutes would do for me, so I guess it’s time for me to skid. He must be handing out a pretty good line of talk on the upper deck.”
She begged him not to leave her alone, saying that Farley lived by rules fixed by his doctor and that the nurse was likely to interrupt the call at any minute. As he stood uncertain whether to go or wait for Eaton, they heard the lawyer saying good-bye, and in a moment he came down.