“Surest thing you know!”
Johnathan held out for nine days.
“I’m too nervously constituted to handle such cheap humanity as factory help,” he explained stiffly to Nathan the evening of the ninth day. “I’m not giving in, understand, or admitting you’re anything but a bumptious, swelled-headed boy. But I want you to go back upstairs and get those orders off—somehow! It’s only because I haven’t the patience and time to give to the manufacturing end that I’m temporarily sacrificing my principles——”
“The piece rate stands, Pa?”
“For the present, yes! When I’ve had time to study into it, we’ll go into conference over it.”
“All right—if you’ll promise to keep hands off, I’ll try to get the wheels turning once more. But, Pa!”
“Well?”
“I’m getting kind of sick working here for next to nothing. I want to go down on the books for twenty dollars a week.”
“Twenty dol——”
Johnathan nearly fell on his forehead.