Before he returned to his boarding-house Jerry strolled into the jobbing district and stood for some time on the sidewalk opposite Copeland-Farley’s store. His twenty shares of stock gave him an exalted sense of proprietorship. He was making progress; he was a stockholder in a corporation. But it was a corporation that was undoubtedly going to the bad.
It was quite true that Corbin & Eichberg were making heavy inroads upon Copeland-Farley trade. They were broadening the field of their operations and developing territory beyond the farthest limits to which Copeland-Farley had extended local drug jobbing. It was not a debatable matter that if Copeland persisted in his evil courses the business would go by the board.
Copeland hadn’t been brought up to work; that was his trouble, Jerry philosophized. And yet Copeland was doing better. As Jerry thought of him his attitude became paternal. He grinned as he became conscious of his dreams of attempting—he, Jeremiah Amidon—to pull Billy Copeland back from the pit for which he seemed destined, and save the house of Copeland-Farley from ruin.
He crossed the street, found the private watchman sitting in the open door half asleep, roused him, and gave him a cigar he had purchased for the purpose.
Then he walked away whistling cheerfully and beating the walk with his stick.
CHAPTER XI
CANOEING
Life began to move more briskly for Nan. She was not aware that certain invitations that reached her were due to a few words carefully spoken in safe quarters by Eaton.
One of the first large functions of the dawning season was a tea given by Mrs. Harrington for a visitor. Mrs. Harrington not only asked Nan to assist, but she extended the invitation personally in the Farley parlor, much to Nan’s astonishment.
One or two young gentlemen who had paid Nan attentions when she first came home from school looked her up again. John Cecil Eaton was highly regarded by the younger men he met at the University Club, and was not without influence. A reference to Nan as an unusual person; some saying of hers, quoted carelessly at the round table, was instrumental in directing attention anew to her as a girl worth knowing. If any one said, “How’s her affair with Copeland going?” Eaton would retort, icily, that it wasn’t going; that there never had been anything in it but shameless gossip.
Jerry now reserved his Thursday evenings for Nan: not for any particular reason except that Eaton had taken him to the Farleys on a Thursday and from sentimental considerations he consecrated the day to repetitions of the visit. Nan was immensely kind to him; it was incredible that a girl so separated from him by immeasurable distances should be so cordial, so responsive to his overtures of friendship. Once she sent him a note—the frankest, friendliest imaginable note—to say that on a particular Thursday evening she could not see him. His disappointment was as nothing when weighed against his joy that she recognized his claim upon that particular evening and took the trouble to explain that the nurse would be out and that she would be too busy with Farley to see him. He replied with flowers—which brought him another note.