“I am awfully sorry,” John began, “but perhaps you'd as soon hear it from me as from him——”
“He didn't tell you I must go, did he? He didn't say that—I thought he didn't mean it——”
“That's what he said.”
Gordon leaned heavily against the desk.
“I knew he was wanting to get rid of me, but I didn't think it would come yet a while;—I—I was hoping I could hold on a little longer. Why! I have been here forty years—I'm not fit for anything else!”
Unconsciously in his excitement he raised his voice, and the last word was almost a cry. He choked down his emotion. “He'll get his deserts one of these days! A man can't go on forever, as he's gone on, walking over people, and prosper, and he'll find it so!”
John stole a glance over the room.
“I wouldn't speak so loud,” he cautioned. “They will hear you.”
“I don't care!” fiercely. “I don't care what they hear!” but he sank his voice to a hoarse whisper. “I—it isn't right, Norton,—it isn't right!” He paused an instant to let his gaze wander about the long bare room with its rows of desks, and a sudden mist came before his eyes. “Why! I haven't missed half a dozen days since I started in here. Summer and winter every morning at eight I've pulled off my coat and hung it with my hat on that nail over there,—it's been 'Gordon's nail' for forty years!” Then he broke down completely.
The office grew very hushed and still. The clerks stopped in their work and took in the scene with eager silent curiosity.