Fondest memories it’s bringing
Of the girl I love, so far away, to-night.
Some folks laugh and call it folly
When I tell them you’re still true,
But you love me, don’t you, Molly?
Say you’re coming back, please do!”
The boy forgot all about his poetry, unless it was to try putting his loneliness and heart-hunger in words. Yet somehow he could not publish these. He filed them away with Carol’s letters. He lived, moved, had his being, in the box-shop.
Johnathan had been elected president and treasurer, Charley Newton who had left an office job at the process works to become the Forge bookkeeper (and learn how to thwart Johnathan making entries in his books and getting them awry), had been elected vice-president. Joe Partridge, who had arisen to the prominence of foreman, was clerk of the corporation, though Lawyer Bob Hentley did the secretarial work and all Joel had to do was sign on the dotted line. Nathan, not being of age, could not be an officer. His large capacity was “General Superintendent.”
As money flowed into the firm’s coffers, the prospects of the Forge family started looking up.
Johnathan began buying suits of clothes, evolved a propensity for bat neckties and learned to smoke cigars. He was less conscientious about his attendance at church and took long trips off “to keep the trade in line.” Invariably he found, however, that his son had contrived to do this by letter. When his “trade” began discussing deals and discounts of which Johnathan had never heard, it made him feel rather foolish and always angry. He returned grimly determined that he was going to run his own business or know the reason why. But before the first day was ended, he had become so engrossed in some new office contrivance or new set of forms, that he forgot larger problems,—or some quarrel with his boy sent him off to walk the streets for hours and pity himself. The matter of running his own business sagged until it was time for another venture at “keeping the trade in line.”