Sommers shrieked with laughter, and patted Dresser on the back. "Sammy, you're a great man! I have never done you justice."
"The management has been changed," Dresser said gruffly. "They wanted a man of education, not a mere reporter."
"Who owns it?"
"R. G. Carson has the controlling interest."
Sommers relapsed into laughter. "So this is your ranch in Montana?"
Dresser rose with an offended air.
"Oh! sit down, man. I am complimenting you. Haven't you a place as office boy, compositor, or something for a needy friend?"
"I don't see what you're so funny about, doctor," Miss M'Gann expostulated.
"Spoiling the Philistines, you see," Dresser added, making an effort to chime in with Sommers's irony.
They talked late. Webber, the stylish young clerk, dropped in, and the conversation roamed over the universal topics of the day,—the hard times, the position of the employee in a corporation, etc. The clerk in the Baking Powder Trust was inclined to philosophical acceptance of present conditions. Abstractly there might not be much justice for the poor, but here in the new part of the country every man had his chance to be on top, to become a capitalist. There was the manager of the B. P. T. He had begun on ten dollars a week, but he had bided his time, bought stock in the little mill where he started, and now that the consolidation was arranged, he was in a fair way to become a rich man. To be rich, to have put yourself outside the ranks of the precarious classes—that was the clerk's ambition. Dresser was doubtful whether the good, energetic young clerk could repeat in these days the experience of the manager of the B. P. T. The two women took part in the argument, and finally Alves summed the matter up: