"Good luck, and good-bye until next fall."
"If you do change your mind——If you can manage it——" Betty said.
So George, two or three days before commencement, left Princeton for Wall Street, and presented his letter.
The offices of Blodgett and Sinclair were gorgeous and extensive, raw with marble, and shining with mahogany. They suggested a hotel in bad taste rather than a factory that turned out money in spectacular quantities.
"Mr. Blodgett will see you," a young man announced in an awed voice, as if such condescension were infrequent.
In the remote room where Blodgett lurked the scheme of furnishing appeared to culminate. The man himself shared its ornamental grossness. He glanced up, his bald head puckering half its height. George saw that although he was scarcely middle-aged Blodgett was altogether too fat, with puffy, unhealthily coloured cheeks. In such a face the tiny eyes had an appearance nearly porcine. The man's clothing would have put an habitué of the betting ring at ease—gray-and-white checks, dove-coloured spats, a scarlet necktie. Pudgy fingers twisted Mr. Alston's letter. The little eyes opened wider. The frown relaxed. A bass voice issued from the broad mouth:
"If you've come here to learn, you can't expect a million dollars a week. Say fifteen to start."
George didn't realize how extraordinarily generous that was. He only decided he could scrape along on it.
"Mr. Alston," the deep voice went on, "tells me you're a great football player. That's a handicap. All you can tackle here is trouble, and the only kicking we have is when Mundy boots somebody out of a job. He's my office manager. Report to him. Wait a minute. I'd give a ping-pong player a job if Mr. Alston asked me to. He's a fine man. But then I'm through. It's up to the man and Mundy. If the man's no good Mundy doesn't even bother to tell me, and it's twenty stories to the street."
George started to thank him, but already the rotund figure was pressed against the desk, and the tiny eyes absorbed in important-looking papers.