And then, with shrewdness, he began his discussion of Jimmy's plan, and no expert investigator could have made a more exhaustive examination than he did. Jimmy's wits were sharpened by this catechism, and his ideas improved and grew apace. He even admitted that he had studied the sales methods of other firms and apparently gained the elder man's approval for his activity and judgment.
The afternoon daylight had waned before they realized the passage of time, and Martin consulted his watch and said, "So far we seemed to have threshed this matter out pretty thoroughly; but there's one very important detail you've neglected, and that is to state what you expect in the way of salary."
"By jingoes!" exclaimed Jimmy, straightening in his seat. "I forgot all about that. Do you know, I got so interested in working out this project that I never so much as gave the pay part of it a thought?"
Martin laughed as if delighted by such an absurdity.
"Well," he remarked, "if that's the way you handle your private affairs it doesn't look promising for whoever employs you. No, I'll retract that, and on second thought reverse that judgment. I'll say that if you invariably put your employer's interests before your own your sole chance to succeed is to become a member of any firm you work for. I suggest that you put that up to—Sayers."
"Don't quite get you," said Jimmy, as if puzzled. "You aren't having fun with me, are you?"
"I am not," asserted the shrewd old business man. "I'm in earnest."
"But mightn't Mr. Sayers think I had an awful nerve? Perhaps he'd not give me a chance at all and—I want that job because I'd like to prove that there's a little more to me than a comic supplement. I need money, but about the biggest reward a man can get is the absolute conviction that he made good."
Martin studied Jim's face with a look of warm approbation, but Jimmy, entirely unaware of the scrutiny, stared into the fireplace with eyes that seemed glowing with big dreams.
"If I thought Mr. Sayers wouldn't think me a fool," he said, almost as if to himself, "I'd like to have him give me a chance with these schemes of mine on this basis: That I'd go to work for him for my bare living expenses—I'd work for just half the salary I got from the Columbus people—and that he would give me a percentage and all the increase of sales. And—I'd like to take that payment in stock in the business, so that if I did make a big success of it, I'd feel thereafter, year by year, that I was hustling for myself as well as the Sayers Company."