"Unless the wage-level should fall, Mr. Manley, as some economists predict. After having had the pleasure of knowing you, it seems to me highly improbable that I shall be required to pay you more."
"Well," said Paul, suddenly troubled, "it will be a whole lot more than that—but—where in thunder am I to get a job that will pay me five or six thousand per year?"
"That is for you to discover," said Beaks, smiling moonishly at him through his glasses. "You will certainly be a very exceptional young man if you get it. Here is a copy of the will. Ponder it. Digest it. Note the provision that the trust is to lapse as to you if you contest it. You have my best wishes, and I am sure that you had the best wishes of your uncle, as well as his lively distrust. You have eighteen months during which you may fix the income you shall receive during the lifetime of inactivity whose prospect seems to please you. You may call me up, if there is anything I can explain. Good day!"
He picked up his desk telephone. "The conference is ended, Miss Prouty," he said.
IV
Paul went down into the subway in a daze; so distraught was he that he dropped a real nickel into the turnstile.
Five or six thousand per year! He didn't know anybody who made such a royal salary. He knew, by hearsay, that such lucky fellows existed; he supposed that the towering buildings of lower New York must house a number of them. He had heard that movie actors made a million dollars per year apiece, but such large sums meant nothing to him—as, in all probability, they mean nothing to many movie actors. Men in banks, where money is visible in heaps, made no such salaries; he knew a paying-teller in a Harlem bank who sat amid currency like a junkman amid bundles of old newspapers, and he made per week only twenty-three dollars.
But, if he could only get it, what couldn't he do with five or six thousand per year! Why, he couldn't waste time working if he was ever to spend so much money; his uncle had shown sense there. For ten dollars per week he could get a large and sunny room in a swell apartment, with hot and cold water, steam heat, electric light, and breakfast optional. He would have a belted dressing-gown—five dollars in Sonnenthal's—and a smoking table with Virginia and Turkish and English cigarettes. After his optional breakfast he would lay off in an easy chair, and read three or four newspapers—he had never had time to read newspapers thoroughly. He would smoke cigarettes, yawning and tapping his mouth, and glancing occasionally through the window to see ordinary people hurrying about their work.