"Of course, I could take him in with me and show him the ropes, but he couldn't learn anything worth while that way. He'd simply be a copy-cat. He'd develop no originality. Besides, I'd rather see him in some other line. You understand, Ellins? Something a little more substantial. Got to find it for himself, though. He's got to make good on his own hook before I'll help him any more. So out he goes.
"Ought to have a year or so to pick up the elements of business, though. So let's find a place for him here in the Corrugated. No snap job. I want him to earn every dollar he gets, and to live off what he earns. Do him good. Maybe it'll knock some of the fool notions out of his head. Oh, he's got 'em. Say, you couldn't guess what fool idea he came back from college with. Thought he wanted to be a painter. Uh-huh! An artist! Asked me to set him up in a studio. All because him and a room mate had been daubin' some brushes with oil paints at a summer school they went to during a couple of vacations. Seems a long-haired instructor had been telling Hartley what great talent he had. Huh! I soon cured him of that. 'Go right to it, son,' says I. 'Paint something you can sell for five hundred and I'll cover it with a thousand. Until then, not a red cent.' And inside of twenty-four hours he concluded he wasn't any budding Whistler or Sargent, and came asking what I thought he should tackle first. Eh? Think you could place him somewhere?"
So Old Hickory merely shrugs his shoulders and presses the button for Piddie. I expect he hears a similar tale about once a month and as a rule he comes across with a job for sonny boy. 'Specially when it's a director that does the askin'. Now and then, too, one of 'em turns out to be quite a help, and if they're utterly useless he can always depend on Piddie to find it out and give 'em the quick chuck.
As a rule this swift release don't mean much to the Harolds and Perceys except a welcome vacation while the old man pries open another side entrance in the house of Opportunity, Ltd., which fact Piddie is wise to. But in this ease it's a different proposition.
"Did you mean it, Tyler, handin' yourself the fresh air that way!" I asks him.
"Absolutely," says he, snappin' some rubber bands around, a neat little bundle.
"Who'd have thought you was a self starter!" says I. "What you going to do now?"
He hunches his shoulders. "Don't know," says he. "I must find something mighty quick, though."
"Oh, it can't be as desperate a case as that, can if?" I asks. "You know you'll get two weeks' pay and with that any single-footed young hick like you ought to——"
"But it happens I'm not single-footed," breaks in Hartley.