“Bah! It’s the Lord’s Prayer.”
“You mean it’s a sort of prayer machine.”
“Not on your life. Maude hasn’t any real work to do just now and she’s running off the Lord’s Prayer. I know by the way it clicks. When she strikes ‘our daily bread’ the machine always gives a little gasp. See? The rule of the office is that they must have some diddings doing all the time. The big one with red hair is a perfect marvel at the Declaration of Independence. She’ll be through addressing circulars in a little while and will run off into ‘All men are created equal’—a blooming lie, by the way—without losing a stroke.”
“You have passed the poetry stage, beyond a doubt. But I should think the strain of keeping all this going would be wearing on your sensitive poetical nature. And it must cost something.”
“Oh, yes!” Balcomb pursed his lips and stroked his fine soft beard. “But it’s worth it. I’m not playing for small stakes. I’m looking for Christmas trees. Now they’ve got their eyes on me. These old Elijahs that have been the bone and sinew of the town for so long that they think they own it, are about done for. You can’t sit in a bank here any more and look solemn and turn people down because your corn hurts or because the chinch bugs have got into the wheat in Dakota or the czar has bought the heir apparent a new toy pistol. You’ve got to present a smiling countenance to the world and give the glad hand to everybody you’re likely to need in your business. I jolly everybody!”
“That comes easy for you; but I didn’t know you could make an asset of it.”
“It’s part of my working capital. Now you’d better cut loose from old man Carr and move up here and get a suite near me. I’ve got more than I can do,—I’m always needing a lawyer,—organizing companies, legality of bonds, and so on. Dignified work. Lots of out-of-town people come here and I’ll put you in touch with them. I threw a good thing to Van Cleve only the other day. Bond foreclosure suit for some fellows in the East that I sell stuff to. They wrote and asked me the name of a good man. I thought of you—old college days and all that—but Van Cleve had just done me a good turn and I had to let him have it. But you’d better come over. You’ll never know the world’s in motion in that musty old hole of Carr’s. You get timid and afraid to go near the water by staying on shore so long. But say, Morris, you seem to be getting along pretty well in the social push. Your name looks well in the society column. How do you work it, anyhow?”
“Don’t expect me to give the snap away. The secret’s valuable. And I’m not really inside; I am only peering through the pickets!”
“Tush! Get thee hence! I saw you in a box at the theater the other night,—evidently Mrs. Carr’s party. There’s nothing like mixing business with pleasure. Ah me!”
He yawned and stroked his beard and laughed, with a fine showing of white teeth.