The girl he left behind

By Helen Beecher Long

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Title: The girl he left behind

Author: Helen Beecher Long

Illustrator: Robert Emmett Owen

Release date: February 27, 2025 [eBook #75475]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: George Sully & Company, 1918

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND ***





THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND




  THE “DO SOMETHING”
  BOOKS

  BY
  HELEN BEECHER LONG

    JANICE DAY
    THE TESTING OF JANICE DAY
    HOW JANICE DAY WON
    THE MISSION OF JANICE DAY

  12mo. Cloth. Illustrated
  Price per volume, $1.25 net

  GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
  NEW YORK


[Illustration: “I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things straight here!”

                                                       (_See Page 138_)]




  THE GIRL HE LEFT
  BEHIND

  BY
  HELEN BEECHER LONG

  Author of
  The “Janice Day” Books

  ILLUSTRATED BY
  R. EMMETT OWEN

  GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
  NEW YORK




  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
  GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

  _All rights reserved_

  PRINTED IN U. S. A.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                           PAGE

      I “So Perfectly Capable”        11

     II A Comparison                  22

    III “Dogfennel”                   30

     IV The Skinners                  41

      V The Dream of a Star           53

     VI Two Good-byes                 66

    VII Leading Up to a Climax        77

   VIII A Puzzling Situation          89

     IX The Duty Devolves             98

      X Love and Business            107

     XI War Is Declared              121

    XII The Image He Took Away       129

   XIII The Awakening                140

    XIV Benway’s Discovery           152

     XV From “Over There”            164

    XVI The Clouds Thicken           175

   XVII A Rendezvous With Death      185

  XVIII The Wrath of the Hun         198

    XIX Uncertainties                205

     XX So Far Away!                 216

    XXI The Burden                   224

   XXII The Fight                    231

  XXIII Comparisons                  241

   XXIV Opening the Way              248

    XXV Compensation                 259

   XXVI His Awakening                265




ILLUSTRATIONS


  “I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things
    straight here!” (_See Page 138_)               _Frontispiece_

                                                           FACING
                                                            PAGE
  He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great
    car circled clumsily above the spot (_See
    Page 201_)                                                200

  “I nominate her as assistant manager, to hold
    the job till Frank Barton comes back!”
    (_See Page 227_)                                          227

  “You have been in my thoughts continually--the
    girl I left behind” (_See Page 268_)                      268




THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND




CHAPTER I

“SO PERFECTLY CAPABLE”


Ethel Clayton gathered the several letters with their accompanying
checks in a neat sheaf and rose from her desk, which was placed nearest
the door of the manager’s office. With the papers in her left hand she
went to the door on which was stenciled “Mr. Barton” and opened it
without waiting for a reply to her knock. She knew only Jim Mayberry
was in the room with the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.

As she pushed the door inward she heard Frank Barton saying:

“I am puzzled what answer to make them, Jim.”

The manager was at his desk. Mayberry, leaning back in his chair,
nodded understandingly and in agreement. The general manager was not
in the habit of taking the superintendent of the factory into his
confidence in particular instances and Mayberry was alive to that fact.
He listened. Listening, and keeping one’s mouth shut, never hurt a man
yet.

The girl at the door of the office waited, too. Her business with the
manager was important, if not imperative.

“The Bogata people have been good customers of ours in the past,” went
on Barton, reflectively. “But I have inside information that their
credit is wabbly. It is strained, just as ours has been. If we tied up
twenty to thirty thousand dollars in their particular line of goods,
and then had the goods left on our hands, it might be fatal to the
Hapwood-Diller Company, even now.

“The expansion of mercantile values and the increase in profits have
not struck our kind of production, as you very well know, Jim. Our
stock is not listed among the ‘war brides.’ Rather it might better be
termed a ‘war widow.’ The company has had a hard pull, Jim. We can’t
afford to take many chances.”

Again the superintendent sat tight and merely nodded. The declining
sun delivered slanting rays in through the high windows of the general
manager’s office. The two men--neither of whom had arrived at thirty
years--sat with preternaturally grave faces, one ruminating upon the
event that had unexpectedly arisen in the affairs of the concern they
had both worked for since boyhood; the other possibly giving much more
thought to his own personal matters.

For Jim Mayberry, without being in the least neglectful of his duties
as superintendent of the factory, was a person given much to the
contemplation of what he called “the prime law of nature: Looking out
for Number One.” He did, however, suggest:

“Those Bogata people have been all right folks, Frank. The factory’s
made money on their orders.”

“That’s just it,” the manager returned briskly, but with a gesture that
betrayed his indecision.

He was a tall, black-haired, virile fellow, clean shaven, good color in
his cheeks, and impeccably dressed. Mayberry, in contrast, had light
hair which already he plastered across his crown to hide an incipient
bald spot. He wore a small blond moustache and had numerous wrinkles
about his eyes.

“Just the same it is not safe, I firmly believe, to accept the order.
But a brusk refusal might do the Hapwood-Diller Company untold harm at
some future time. The Bogata concern may come back. Miracles do happen.”

“Better accept the order then,” Mayberry put in. “We can postpone
filling it. We don’t have to give a bond. If they really prove to be
shaky, we can renege.”

The girl, who had come in and softly closed the door, flashed the
superintendent a glance that was all scorn for business ethics thus
expressed. But Barton replied quite calmly:

“Two objections to that, Jim. In the first place the Hapwood-Diller
Company has always based its policy on honor. Secondly, it is unwise
for us to tie up any money at all in beginning a job we do not intend
to complete.”

“Aw!” grunted the superintendent. His vocabulary--at this juncture at
least--seemed not to be extensive.

There had been a rising murmur in the street under the open windows for
some minutes. Now the sudden crash of martial music broke upon their
ears. Barton’s countenance became vivid with interest, and he swung
himself erect and strode to the nearest window.

“Here come the boys,” he said, pride vibrating in his voice. He was
very military looking. Nothing but the “setting up exercise” could ever
have made his shoulders so very square and his splendidly muscled torso
taper to so narrow a waist.

Mayberry rose and sauntered after him. “Mailsburg’s heroes,” he
observed. “I suppose you’re wishing you were marching away with them,
Frank.”

The other said nothing, but his eyes glowed. The marching column swung
around the corner following the band--a column in khaki, a color
already becoming familiar on the streets although war was not many
months old.

Ethel had gone to the other window and was likewise looking out upon
the quota of the National Guard, with packs and rifles, on their way to
the railroad station. A little group of women, girls and children clung
to the column and kept pace with it. The men spectators seemed rather
ashamed to follow on, but stood, nevertheless, on the curb to watch the
boys go by.

“I expect they’ll have a hot old time down at that training camp,”
drawled Mayberry.

Barton did not seem to hear him. His hand came to salute as the colors
went by.

A volume of voices rose from below as the band music drifted into the
distance.

“And mebbe marching to their graves!”

“It’s a shame that some that can least be spared have to go while them
that would never be missed keep out of it.”

“You’re right! Some of ’em’s got fathers an’ mothers, an’ wives!” cried
a shrill voice, “while them that ain’t got a soul dependent on ’em----”

“There’s one yonder,” was the quick rejoinder. “And had all the benefit
of Guard training too!” And the speaker, a woman, directed the gaze of
her companions to the office window.

Mayberry chuckled. “They’ve pinned you to the wall, Frank,” he murmured
in the ear of the white-faced manager.

Ethel Clayton had turned suddenly from the window. “Have you time to
sign these checks and letters before the outgoing mail, Mr. Barton?”
she asked.

He took the papers, but did not verbally reply for a moment. His
countenance had become calm again, if still pale, when he had seated
himself in his chair and turned in it so that the others could both
observe him.

“I will sign them at once, Miss Clayton,” Barton said quite composedly.
“But first----”

For a moment his gaze centered upon her. There was something wholly
good to look at in the girl’s face and figure. Had she not dressed
so practically for her work her personal attractions would have been
further enhanced. Mayberry was watching her, too; and his gaze betrayed
a certain eagerness, whereas the manager’s eyes merely revealed
expectancy. Then he flicked a glance in Mayberry’s direction.

“Perhaps Miss Clayton might give us a word of advice upon this matter,
Jim?” he said questioningly, and with a quizzical little smile.

The superintendent, a little startled, shifted his gaze from the girl’s
face to the manager’s countenance. Ethel, perfectly composed, waited
for the explanation of Barton’s observation.

“Woman’s intuition forever!” the latter ejaculated.

“What do you mean, Frank?” hastily demanded Jim Mayberry. “If you and I
don’t know what to do----”

Ethel flushed faintly, but looked questioningly at the manager. The
implied doubt of her ability in Mayberry’s tone possibly piqued her.
Frank Barton said in his good-natured, easy manner:

“Oh, we know _what_ to do. But it’s the way the thing is done. You know
about this new Bogata order, Miss Clayton?”

“Of course, Mr. Barton.”

“I do not see how we can accept it. The Bogata Company is not in good
financial standing. But we must not offend them. The refusal must be
one to which they cannot take exception. It is a big order, and they
have sent it in without question, just as though they expected us to
get to work on it with merely an acknowledgment of the favor.”

“I see,” the girl said in her composed way.

“You are so perfectly capable, Miss Clayton,” laughed the general
manager. “See what you can do with the matter. Do you think we can keep
within the lines of safety, and yet make no enemy of the Bogata people?”

“I believe it can be done, Mr. Barton,” replied the girl.

There was a decision in her manner of speaking that revealed Ethel
Clayton as being quite what the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company had said she was--“capable.”

“See what you can do with a letter, then,” Barton went on, producing
the order sheets in question and handing them to her along with the
letters and checks he had signed.

She left the private office without further word. Jim Mayberry was
frowning.

“You’re trusting a good deal to that girl, Frank,” he growled.

“I’ve never trusted anything to her yet that she hasn’t handled all
right,” the manager replied easily. “If I manage to--to get away, Jim,
you’ll find her a great help here.”

“Uh-huh!” grunted the superintendent. “Maybe.”

“You are insular,” laughed Frank Barton. “The women are forging to the
front, man. Miss Clayton is far more capable than some of the heads of
departments who have grown gray here.”

“Maybe,” agreed the superintendent. “But I don’t want to see her out
there in overalls, bossing my men around. Don’t forget that, Frank.”

The superintendent arose and strolled out of the private office. In the
larger desk room he halted and watched the “capable” girl at her desk
nearest the manager’s door. Ethel was the “buffer” between much outside
annoyance and the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.

There were gold and red lights in her chestnut hair; the pallor of
her countenance was not unhealthy; merely she was not enough in the
open. But where the sun had kissed the bridge of her nose there was a
sprinkle of tiny freckles. There were flecks of gold, too, in her brown
eyes. Her mouth and chin were firm rather than soft, and the gaze of
her eyes direct; nevertheless there was nothing unfeminine about her
appearance.

The severest critic could hold no brief against the charms of her
figure. Her arms were beautifully rounded, her wrists tapering, her
hands just the right size. She had a naturally small waist, and the
lines of her hips showed that her limbs were slenderly yet strongly
built. She was a tall girl.

The superintendent caught her eye after a moment, she looking up
thoughtfully from the papers before her.

“You want to handle that business with gloves, Ethel,” he advised in
a low voice. “Barton’s hardly himself to-day--the boys going away and
all. He thinks that, with three years’ experience in bossing those
sappies around the armory, he should jump right into this war. Get to
be a general or something right off the handle,” and he chuckled.

Again the girl’s face flushed softly and she dropped her gaze. She made
him no reply at all, but Mayberry went on:

“And that Fuller girl’s got him running around in circles, too. You can
see he isn’t himself, or he would not balk at such an order as this
from the Bogata people. Why, they’re all right folks. The factory’s
made a lot of money out of their orders. And here----”

“Did Mr. Barton ask you to discuss this matter with me, Mr. Mayberry?”
asked the girl coldly and without looking up again. “If not, please
remember that he has commissioned me to write a letter to them that
will meet his approval. Don’t bother me now.”

“Oh, pshaw, Ethel!” the man said, smiling down at her unctuously.
“Don’t take every little thing so blame seriously. Frank Barton and I
were kids together. I can’t fall down and worship him the way some of
you do. Anyway, you’d better show him how to take a chance with these
Bogata people--if you really want to _help_. I know they’re all right.”

“Why don’t you tell that to Mr. Barton?” the girl asked rather tartly.

“Oh, pshaw!” chuckled the superintendent. “Let it go till to-morrow.
It’s almost closing time, anyway. Take a little spin in that car of
mine before supper, will you?”

“Thank you; no.”

“Aw! don’t act so offishly, Ethel. You’ve never been to ride with me
yet.”

“I understand that other girls have--to their sorrow,” Miss Clayton
responded in a tone that cut through even Jim Mayberry’s skin. He
flushed dully and his lazy eyes began to glow.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Ethel,” he said. “I want to talk to
you about that. Let me drive you home to-night and I’ll explain these
stories that you have heard.”

He strolled away as Little Skinner came across the room to ask a
question. Could it be that Little Skinner had received a secret
signal to break in upon the superintendent’s objectionable line of
conversation? At least, her business with Ethel was brief.

The latter’s attention immediately returned to the problem the manager
had put up to her for solution. She was made proud whenever Frank
Barton did anything like this, and of late it was not infrequent that
he had shown his trust in her ability.

Yet there was a sting in the way he had spoken, too. She knew well
enough that the sting was unintentional on his part. Never had the
general manager been other than scrupulously polite to her. She was
always “Miss Clayton” to him, and he deferred to her in many ways and
was as courteous in his busiest moments as he could have been meeting
her at a social affair. That was Frank Barton’s way.

But--

She found that her gaze had wandered from the papers before her to
the small mirror set into the rather ornate inkstand that stood upon
her desk--a birthday present from her office mates not many months
before. The girl reflected there was, Ethel Clayton very well knew,
better looking than the average girl. Her even features were quietly
beautiful. She perhaps lacked the verve and dash possessed by some
girls. She had one particular girl in mind as she thought this.
She lacked the tricks of the social trade too, that that same girl
possessed.

She shrugged her shoulders and brought her attention back with a jerk
to the matter in hand. But there was faint disgust in her tone as she
murmured:

“Yes, just as he says: ‘Miss Clayton is so perfectly capable.’ Pah!”




CHAPTER II

A COMPARISON


She read the letter from the Bogata Company and again glanced through
the order. It was a large one. It called for certain supplies she knew
the factory did not have on hand. She realized that the goods ordered
were all of a special pattern and would be practically useless either
to the Hapwood-Diller Company or to any other concern save the Bogata
people if the latter should be unable to take the goods.

Yet this letter assumed that the order would be accepted and the goods
turned out without any hesitancy on the part of the manufacturers, and
upon the usual terms. The Bogata Company ignored the possibility of the
Hapwood-Diller Company having heard of its financial embarrassments.
The letter and accompanying order were sent, Ethel was sure, in a
spirit of bravado. To use a common phrase, the Bogata people were
“trying to put something over.”

If the scheme went through, all well and good. The Hapwood-Diller
Company might be made the means of saving the Bogata people from actual
and complete collapse. Ethel knew, however, that her employing concern
was in no shape to assume such a burden. Yet if the firm ordering the
goods finally pulled out of its quagmire of financial difficulty, its
friendship rather than its enmity was to be desired.

Her mind centered upon the matter, the logical circumstances connected
with it marching in slow procession through her brain. She was
acquainted with every important order now on the factory’s books.
Even Jim Mayberry had no better grasp of the details of the factory’s
affairs than Ethel Clayton.

Suddenly she got up and went to a file cabinet wherein was listed the
particulars of all orders as yet unfinished. She began to figure with
pencil and pad upon the already promised output of the factory and its
possible output when the force was driven at top speed.

Her calculations led her to certain unmistakable conclusions. She went
back to her desk, calmly wrote the letter, typed it, and took the
letter and her figures in to Barton. He was about to close his desk for
the day.

“Do you think you have succeeded?” he asked, smiling and taking the
typed sheet from her hand. But in a moment he glanced up quickly and
with a slight frown. “What is this you say here, Miss Clayton? We
cannot accept the order because of work already contracted for? Why,
that----”

“Is the plain truth, Mr. Barton!” she exclaimed, putting forward
her array of figures. “The factory is now working maximum hours and
with a full crew in all departments. I have heard you say yourself
that either extra help or overtime cuts into the profits rather than
increases them. To fulfill contracts we have accepted, if you took on
this of the Bogata Company, we would have to run the machines longer
hours and pay extra wages. The Bogata people offer no price for their
work to cover such an increased cost. My letter embodies the actual
truth without going into particulars; but my statements can be easily
proved if they are inclined to be critical.”

Barton’s face had been gradually lighting up, and it was with real
admiration that he said at her conclusion:

“Fine! I’ll sign that and you can put it in the mail in the morning.
Has John gone to the post-office?”

“Yes, Mr. Barton.”

“The morning will do,” said the general manager, affixing his signature
to the letter. “You certainly are a capable assistant.”

She flushed at his words as she turned from his desk; and the color
remained in her countenance for some time. But it was not a flush of
pleasure. Indeed, the expression of her countenance was not at all
happy as she closed her desk and left the main office a little later.

At the street exit she hesitated; then she went back through the drying
and cutting rooms and had John Murphy let her out of the side gate
which would not be opened for an hour yet for the exit of the factory
hands. She had caught a glimpse of Jim Mayberry sitting in his car out
in front.

She did not like the superintendent, and for more reasons than one. In
the first place, he was one of those men who seem to have no respect at
all for girls who worked. Ethel was not sure how well he was received
by Mailsburg people whose first thoughts were of society. But Mayberry
had a bad reputation among many respectable people. Careful mothers and
fathers frowned on his attentions to their daughters.

As she turned into Burnaby Street on her way home she saw Frank Barton
ahead of her. His military stride was likewise taking him briskly
homeward. The girl might have hastened her own steps and joined him;
but she hesitated, for that was not like Ethel Clayton. Her association
with the handsome general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing
Company had been entirely on a business footing. The fact that they
attended the same church had scarcely brought them together outside the
offices of the concern.

Barton was well liked by most Mailsburg people. Especially had he been
commended for his work of the last two years--since he had been raised
to the pinnacle of general manager of the biggest manufacturing concern
in the town.

Yet there are always carping critics in every place and in any event.
As mark the criticism hurled at the young manager from the sidewalk
that afternoon as the boys were marching from the National Guard Armory
to the railway station.

Ethel knew that the suggestion that Barton was a slacker must have hurt
the general manager cruelly. She, perhaps as well as anybody else, knew
why Frank Barton, trained in the Guard, and a military man from choice,
was not marching away with this first quota at the call to arms.

If many Mailsburg people looked at Barton in the way suggested by the
careless criticism which had lately reached his ears, Ethel Clayton
knew that the manager’s existence was going to be a hard one. She
did not want to see him go to the war. Indeed, she was by no means
inspired as yet with any degree of patriotism. The war was too remote
and our reason for entering into it too theoretical. The blood of but
few of our men had been shed, and those were, as a rule, such as were
connected with the more spectacular portions of the service, nor had
our women and children been butchered by the Hun.

In her heart Ethel longed to say something to Frank Barton to ease the
wound which he had suffered that afternoon. Should she overtake him and
speak? And then, even while she hesitated, the humming of a smoothly
running automobile sounded behind her.

She turned to look, startled, fearing it was Jim Mayberry. But a girl
was driving the car that swerved in toward the curb, stopping just
beside the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company.

“Oh, Mr. Barton!”

The girl in the car was handsome, but with a high color and a shrill
voice. She had a great deal of light hair, which was carefully dressed;
she wore an expensive motor hat and veil; her cerise motor coat was of
heavy silk. If the frame ever sets off the picture to advantage, then
Helen Fuller was a work of art!

“It’s just too, too lovely that I should catch you this way, Mr.
Barton,” she cried, as Ethel approached nearer. “You can’t say you are
busy and I am _sure_ it is not yet dinner time. I _must_ see you about
our garden festival. You know, for the Red Cross. We _all_ must do our
bit _these_ days. Do hop in and advise with poor me.”

Ethel came within range of Barton’s vision. He gave her as usual one
of his warm, kind smiles, lifting his hat. Helen Fuller stared at
the passing girl, who plainly heard her scornful query: “One of your
factory hands, Mr. Barton?”

“One of our office force--and one of the most valuable on the pay roll
of the Hapwood-Diller Company, Miss Fuller, I assure you.”

But the cheerful reply did not take the barb out of the wound Helen
Fuller’s question had made. A little farther along the street, however,
Ethel shook herself and murmured:

“What a perfect fool I am! It is ridiculous to mind anything that Helen
Fuller says. She remembers very well going to school with me and that
I was always at or near the head of the class and she at the foot.
That was before Grandon Fuller had that stock in the company left him
by Uncle Diller. Dear me! how the possession of money changes some
people.” Then, and cheerfully, she exclaimed aloud: “Ah! here’s Benway.”

A young man with a perfectly splendid head of brown curly hair,
flawless complexion, level brows, fine, open gray eyes set well apart,
a straight nose and lips not full enough to be sensuous but not too
thin, the whole countenance softened by a cleft chin and humorous lines
at the corners of his mouth--that was Benway Chase.

He came swinging along the walk and seized Ethel companionably by her
right arm, although that placed him upon the inner side of the path.
She met his look with one of pleasure, and they went on together like
the good comrades they were.

People whom they knew and met greeted them with a matter-of-course air.
To see Ethel Clayton and Ben Chase together was nothing astonishing for
Mailsburg folk. They had been neighbors and chums since they were in
rompers.

Her brightness of countenance faded when her old chum left her at the
gate of the Clayton cottage. She cast a commiserating glance after him
as he went on, whistling. It was not until then that the withered,
useless right arm of the young man became really noticeable.

She called to her mother that she was home from work and went up to her
room to freshen her dress for dinner. Benway slipped out of her mind as
she did this--and most other things, save one. That was a comparison
she had begun to make on Burnaby Street between herself and Helen
Fuller.

Was she jealous of the other girl? Why should she be? She was sure she
would not care to change places with Miss Fuller, money and all, for
any consideration. Yet--

She saw Frank Barton getting into the Fuller car, which Helen drove
so conspicuously about the streets of Mailsburg. Ethel Clayton could
not do that! Ethel must work, and dress plainly six days in the week
because of her position. Miss Fuller was always dressed as gaily
as a bird of paradise. And one must confess that men’s eyes were
attracted--sometimes blinded--by gay clothes. Frank Barton could not be
blamed for being a man. No. She had no complaint to make against Frank
Barton. He was always polite and kind and appreciative.

“And he’d be all of that to a stray kitten that chanced to cross his
path!” she ejaculated in sudden disgust. “Helen Fuller has something to
offer him that I haven’t.”




CHAPTER III

“DOGFENNEL”


Frank Barton stepped into the car beside Miss Fuller and was whirled
away, a willing captive. To tell the truth, the general manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company had been so busy fitting himself for his present
situation with the corporation, which he had now held two years, that
he had found little play-time. Having been motherless since childhood,
and always sisterless, he probably knew less about women than any
normal man in Mailsburg who had arrived at the age of twenty-eight.

No girl had before so plainly shown that she was interested in him--and
Miss Fuller only recently. Her curiosity had first been piqued by
hearing Grandon Fuller speak in strong approval of the manager. Barton
had pulled the concern out of a slough of financial trouble that had
threatened to ruin the Hapwood-Diller Company.

The Fullers had not always been wealthy. At least, not the
Grandon-Fuller branch. Not until Israel Diller died and left them the
bulk of his holdings in the Hapwood-Diller Company were they any better
off than their neighbors on the far end of Burnaby Street, where Ethel
Clayton and her mother and the Chases still lived.

With the money Mrs. Fuller--an ambitious woman--had set out to be the
leader of Mailsburg’s society. To a certain degree she had succeeded.
Helen was growing up to be a society devotee and with scarcely a
sensible idea in her head. But she had beauty, and she made the most of
that.

It was the thing, too, to be alive with interest in some semi-public
topic or other; and Helen was alive to the value of self-advertising.
A week never went by that her name did not appear in the society news
of the city or county papers. She had been out just as long as Frank
Barton had been manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.

She did not really care a fillip for Frank Barton--not at this
time--nor for any other man. But she thoroughly enjoyed the reputation
of having more men dangling after her than any other girl in Mailsburg.
She even endured the society of that “tame cat,” Morrison Copley; for
at least he counted!

“Really, Mr. Barton,” Helen said, having got the manager beside her in
the driving seat of the car. “Really, you show very little interest in
your country’s welfare. Don’t you realize _yet_ we are _at war_?”

Barton’s face was rather glum, but he tried to speak lightly. “I read
something about it in the papers. I’ve been so extremely busy, Miss
Fuller, I fear I should only know of it from hearsay if the Germans
sailed up the creek and landed at old Hammerly’s dock.”

“The boys of the National Guard marched away to-day!” she cried.

“Yes. That does make it look serious,” he agreed in a graver strain.

“Everybody should do his or her bit, Mr. Barton,” the girl said with an
admonitory air. “I am _astonished_ at you. As I tell Morry Copley, if
I were a man nothing should keep me out of uniform. I _do_ think those
khaki colors are awfully _sweet_.”

“I fear,” Barton said grimly, “that the fellows who put on khaki
because it looks ‘sweet’ will not make particularly good soldiers.”

“Morry Copley, for instance?” and she laughed at herself and at the
non-present Copley. “Oh, well, you know what I mean. It really seems
_too_ bad that so many of you men in this town are not a bit patriotic.”

“You’ve got me wrong, Miss Fuller,” the manager said hastily and in
considerable earnestness. “I do not think I lack patriotism. But one
must fulfill one’s duty.”

“Oh, business!” she exclaimed, scornfully.

He was on the defensive. “Your father’s income from our company is what
enables you to drive about in this car, Miss Fuller,” he said bluntly.

“Now, _don’t_, for pity’s sake, talk _business_ to me. I really don’t
understand a thing about it. I presume that girl who passed us just
now--Clayton is her name?--may possess all the business acumen needed.
I haven’t _her_ experience.”

And Frank Barton, startled, wondered why Helen Fuller had taken the
trouble to slur Ethel Clayton.

The Fuller house, built on the exodus of the family from Burnaby
Street, was just the dwelling one knowing Grandon Fuller and his wife
would expect it to be. It was very large and very important looking,
with a lot of gingerbread trimming about the eaves and veranda roof and
the porte-cochère.

A footman in a conspicuous livery stood at attention as Helen stopped
her car under the covered way. With a silver whistle this flunky
summoned a man from the garage to take the automobile. Barton followed
his hostess to the other end of the veranda where quite a party--mostly
the younger matrons and the girls of Mailsburg’s smart set--were
gathered. Tea had been made and two other liveried servants were
rolling service tables about from group to group.

“Well, I have accomplished something,” Helen said, after an apology for
not being at home when her guests arrived and dropping with assumed
weariness into a comfortable chair. Immediately her maid put a knitting
bag into her lap and her mistress seized the needles with avidity.
“Every stitch counts, you know,” she went on. “I only wish I might knit
while I drive my machine. But that is impossible. And I told father
I’d drive the car myself and so let Charles, our chauffeur, enlist. We
women must do our part. Let’s see, Marie; how many of these sweaters
have I done for the soldiers?”

“That is Mam’selle’s second this fortnight,” said the French maid,
without losing her composure. That she did nine-tenths of the work,
Helen merely rattling the needles while company was present, was not a
matter for the world to know.

“You all know Mr. Barton, I think,” Helen went on, placing the manager
in a chair near her, as though he were a stray kitten she had picked
up on the street and brought home as a curiosity. “I’ve managed to
interest _him_ in our garden party. Really, he should be made to do
a good deal for the Red Cross. He has not done a sin-gle sol-i-ta-ry
thing as yet for the _cause_. I tell him he is a slacker of the first
water.”

Some who chanced to hear her smiled. Frank Barton’s ears fairly burned.
It was no joke for him; yet he admitted that Miss Fuller did not
understand--_would_ not understand, perhaps--why he was not in khaki.

“Bah Jove!” drawled the high and somewhat effeminate voice of Morrison
Copley, “Mr. Barton has plenty of company in this burg. I heard old
Hammerly say he thought of offering a reward for the discovery of a
single man within the conscription age here who joins from patriotic
motives. He says patriotism died out in Mailsburg in the last
generation.”

“By the way, Morry,” asked a fellow with the bulging shoulders of
a prizefighter together with a dissipated face, “how did _you_ get
exempted?”

“Dependent parent,” returned Copley. “You know, mothaw really couldn’t
get on without me.”

“That’s true enough,” sneered the other. “Madam Copley would be lost
without her baby boy.”

Morrison Copley did not, however, lack the keener weapons of retort.
“That’s all right, Bradley. I understand you gave the exemption board
the names of two dependent barkeepers.”

The laugh that followed this sally enabled Frank Barton to recover his
composure. These fellows boldly acknowledged their lack of patriotic
feeling. He knew that his reasons for claiming exemption until the
Hapwood-Diller Company was in good shape again were, at least,
commendable.

In a desultory way plans were made for the forthcoming garden party to
raise funds for the local Red Cross chapter. Barton did not find that
either his advice or his efforts were much needed. But he did get a
chance to talk with Miss Fuller; and he was not a deep enough student
of feminine nature to understand just how shallow she was.

The Fullers were of the best socially there was in Mailsburg, despite
the fact that their money had come to them comparatively late. Mrs.
Fuller’s maiden name had been Diller, and the Dillers dated their
aristocracy in the county back to pre-Revolution days. To Barton, whose
antecedents had been quite unimportant, such connections in a social
way seemed worthy.

“Come again to see me, Mr. Barton, when I am alone,” Helen whispered,
when he rose to follow the very first group with their knitting bags
that made its departure. “One must give one’s self more or less to
one’s guests when there is a crowd like this. I want you to take dinner
with us soon--quite _en famille_. Will you?”

Barton promised. Grandon Fuller had always been cordial with him, and
he was glad to be _persona grata_ with the family. After all, it meant
considerable to him to be taken up by the Fullers.

He was the only person on this occasion to walk away from the house.
The others rode in some kind of vehicle. But somebody got into step
with Barton less than ten yards from the gateway.

“What brings you into the swagger part of the town, Frank?” demanded
a harsh voice. “You are not hatching something with Fuller to
double-cross the rest of the Hapwood-Diller stockholders?”

The young manager knew the character of the speaker too well to be
offended. Macon Hammerly wore an apparent grouch to shield himself from
the importunities of his fellowmen. He actually could not say “No” to
any request or favor asked, unless he shouted it.

He was a dry old fellow with stiff, badly brushed iron-gray hair and an
aggressive chin-whisker. He was the last man in Mailsburg to wear “half
leg” boots and had a local cobbler make them for him. He kept a feed
and grain store down on the docks and possessed in all probability more
cash in the bank than any other man in town. But he made no display of
it.

He was distantly related to the Fullers; and he made no display of
that, although Helen called him “Uncle.” He bent a curious and somewhat
disapproving eye upon Barton as he waited for his answer.

“I was just calling there.”

“Huh! On whom?”

“Miss Fuller took me up into her car and brought me over. It seems
there is to be a garden party for the Red Cross----”

“Expected it must be something about a cross,” grumbled Macon Hammerly.
“Red Cross or what not, it will be the double-cross for you if you
don’t look out. You’ve nothing in common, Frank, with that dogfennel.”

“With _what_?” asked Barton, chuckling. “That’s a new one!”

“A new name for that inconsequential, useless crowd that circle about
Grandon Fuller’s gal? Huh! D’you know any better name for them? There
ain’t nothing more useless and picayune along the road than dogfennel.
That whole bunch isn’t worth the powder to blow it to Halifax!”

“‘Dogfennel’,” and Barton still chuckled. “I don’t know but you are
rather hard on our common may-weed. But I grant you that some of those
people I met back there are quite as futile as the name implies. But
Miss Fuller herself! She is a remarkably pretty girl.”

The old man in the linen duster and the broad-brimmed hat was quite as
emphatic as Barton expected him to be. “So’s dogfennel pretty--if you
like weeds. I don’t want to see you mixing in with that crowd, Frank.
How’s business?”

“Better. Had to turn down a big order to-day, but I think we were
justified in doing so.”

“Huh! Who says so? You and Jim Mayberry?” growled Hammerly, who kept in
quite close touch with the factory affairs.

“Not altogether,” Barton smilingly replied. “We took the advice of Miss
Clayton.”

“Huh! You _did_?” Hammerly listened quietly to the manager’s
explanation, commenting in his usual tart way, but with open
satisfaction: “You do show some sense once in a while, Frank. She’s
got a head on her, that Ethel Clayton. And you are right, I’ll bet a
cooky! The Bogata people are due to bust inside of three months. Mark
my words.”

The two men separated at a corner and Barton strode on to his boarding
house and the dinner which he knew would be dished up cold to him now.
Mrs. Trevor played no table favorites in her ménage. The manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company was not happy. His reflections were tinged with
a hue of disgust at his own equivocal situation.

He knew he had good and sufficient reason for not enlisting the minute
of the declaration that a state of war with Germany existed. The same
reason had kept him at home when many of his comrades in the Guard had
gone to the Mexican Border.

He had been spending his strength and thought to one end since being
placed in charge of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company. The
war had struck the concern hard, cutting off or doubling the price
of supplies without broadening the market for manufactured wares or
increasing the profit on them.

Upon the dividends of the company many families in Mailsburg depended
for their very daily bread. Had the dividends been reduced or even
passed for several successive quarters, the Fullers would have got
along all right; but there were stockholders whose livelihood depended
utterly upon the factory running on full time and turning a profit on
every dollar’s worth of product that left the shipping room. And Frank
Barton seemed to be the only man to keep it so running.

For the most part these needy folk were widows or orphans or old people
past working age, who had received their stock from one or another
of the original owners of the factory. These helpless people Barton
had felt particularly his charge. To throw up his job and join the
colors might ruin the small fry depending upon the success of the
Hapwood-Diller Company’s affairs. Until of late he had scarcely found
breathing space to think of anything save the business of the factory.

But now! The boys marching away earlier in the day had stabbed Frank
Barton to the quick. He was not a man who wore his heart on his sleeve.
It was only those who knew him best who suspected the rankling wound
he suffered when his course was unfavorably compared with that of the
guardsmen whose brother-in-arms he had been.

Even Helen Fuller had accused him of being a slacker, and had compared
him with Morry Copley and that Bradley fellow. Barton’s gorge rose as
he thought of this.

“A slacker, eh?” he muttered to himself. “A slacker, am I?”




CHAPTER IV

THE SKINNERS


Jim Mayberry was smoking his second cigarette when a girl came out of
the main door of the factory offices. She was a slim, rather startled
looking girl. Her flaxen hair was pulled back so tightly as to raise
her eyebrows perceptibly; this opened very wide her eyes and seemed
even to pull the point of her nose up a little and raise her upper lip
to display two little rabbit teeth.

“Hello, Skinner,” said the superintendent. “Isn’t Ethel ’most ready?”

“Hello, Jim Mayberry,” responded the girl, who felt no obligation to
show the superintendent any particular respect outside the factory.
“Going to take me home in your flivver?”

“Aren’t you afraid to ride with me?” asked the man with a slow smile.

“Nope. You try to get funny with _me_ and I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

“My!” drawled Mayberry, “aren’t you the catty thing?”

“You’d think so,” rejoined the flat-chested girl with all the strutting
boastfulness of a boy. “No feller’s ever going to kiss _me_ if I don’t
want him to.”

“I bet you!” agreed the superintendent with mock admiration. “But
where’s Ethel?”

“You aren’t waiting for her, are you, Jim?” the slim girl asked,
giggling.

“I thought I was.”

“Then there’s another thought coming to you,” declared the delighted
Skinner. “Ethel went long ago--out through the side gate. Guess she
must have suspected you’d be waiting here.”

Mayberry uttered a brief and impolite expletive. That did not trouble
Mabel Skinner. She lived in a house full of rough men. Her mother was
dead and an older sister kept house for the Skinners. The children of
Sam Skinner had not been brought up according to the Puritan acceptance
of the term. Like Topsy, they had “just growed.”

“She wouldn’t ride in that flivver with you anyway,” Mabel Skinner
added. “But I would.”

“Jump in, then, Little Skinner,” the superintendent said, without
further advertising his chagrin.

“I hope my Sunday School teacher won’t see me,” the girl observed,
getting in beside him quickly. “If she does she will know I am riding
fast to perdition. And _do_ make your old rattle-bang go as fast as
possible, Jim. I just love to scoot over the road. Gee, if I’d only
been made a boy instead of a girl, I’d have been a jockey.”

“Hear the girl!” chuckled Mayberry, who was really after all too
good-natured to be spiteful to his guest. “You’ll be up in one of
these flying machines yet.”

“Oh, that would be grand! I’d go to France and join the flying corps.
That girl from Texas that got over there with the first batch of Yankee
soldiers--did you read about her? They got on to her and sent her back.
That’s because she got married to one of the buddies. Catch _me_! I
wouldn’t marry the best man alive.”

“You won’t,” prophesied Jim Mayberry, still chuckling.

“Smartie! Anyhow, I wouldn’t fall for any man I’ve ever seen yet. Not
even Mr. Barton,” she added, as though there might be some doubt in her
mind about the general manager.

“Humph! who has fallen for him?” demanded the superintendent
suspiciously.

“Every girl in town but me,” declared Mabel Skinner promptly, but
grinning impishly, “He’s an awfully nice man, is Mr. Barton.”

“Yes. I’d fall for him myself if I were a girl, I guess,” Mayberry
agreed.

“Yes--you--would! Say, that’s my corner!”

“I know. But I’m going to spin you around the reservoir and bring you
home the other way.”

“Oh, bully!” ejaculated the girl, fairly jumping in her seat. “I’m
being run away with by a man. Never thought it would happen to me. I
really wish you wasn’t so trifling, Jim Mayberry. I’d maybe sue you
for breach of promise.”

“Then I’m safe, am I?” he asked.

“As far as I am concerned you are. I wouldn’t really marry you on a
bet, Jim. Don’t you know that?”

He was highly amused. Mabel Skinner’s tart tongue always delighted him.
She lived in one of the poorer quarters of the town. When he finally
brought the machine into her street it created a sensation. People
left their supper tables to see Mabel Skinner brought home in the
superintendent’s car.

“What’s the matter, Mab? Broke a leg?” demanded one lout of a boy, with
an impudent grin for Mayberry, and who was just slipping out of the
Skinners’ gate. This was “Boots” Skinner, next younger of the clan than
Mabel.

“Both of ’em, or you wouldn’t catch me ruining my reputation riding
home with Mr. Mayberry. Don’t tell anybody, Boots.”

The superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller factory found that it was he
who felt some confusion in bringing Mabel home. The latter took her
time in getting out of the car.

“I’m awfully much obliged to you, Mr. Mayberry,” she said, in a shrill
and penetrating voice, so that the interested neighbors could all hear.
“I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t brought me. Walked,
I guess. Well! ‘Over the river!’”

She popped into the house before he could get the starter into action
under the fire of the neighbors’ chuckles. They all knew Mabel Skinner;
and most of them had sized up Jim Mayberry for what he was, too.

Mayberry drove down into Mailsburg’s business quarter and stopped
before the Bellevue Hotel. He often took his dinner there and spent the
evening, as well, in some upper room where there were shaded lights,
much cigar smoke, the clink of glasses and the rattle of poker chips.

The superintendent had been born and brought up in Mailsburg, as Frank
Barton had been; but his family was now scattered. He and Barton had
been the closest of chums at school. Mayberry owned quite as bright
a mind as the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company; but he
lacked the balance of his friend.

Had it not been for the inspiration of Barton’s companionship and
example Mayberry would never have obtained the eminence he had in the
factory. In truth, his old chum had actually boosted Mayberry into
the superintendent’s job after having been himself elected manager of
the concern. Not that Mayberry was not well fitted for this position.
But he lacked that quality of ambition to have gained it for himself
without Frank Barton’s good offices. At that, he lacked the grace of
gratitude.

The Bellevue was the gathering place of the sporting men of the town.
When Mayberry came out from dinner, Mr. Grandon Fuller occupied one of
the easy chairs on the porch. Fuller’s taste for society was not like
that of his wife and daughter. He was a big, pursy man with a shock of
white hair and a ruddy countenance. He had a hail-fellow-well-met air
for most occasions, and his jovial manner made him popular with most
people. In local politics he had some prominence.

“Hey, young man!” he called to Mayberry, “you’ve no engagement, have
you? Smith is getting up a party for a little game. Will you join us?”

“Not to-night, Colonel,” returned the superintendent, giving Fuller a
handle to his name that always delighted the rich man. He had been on
the governor’s staff once. “I am sorry. I have an appointment.”

“Tut, tut! can’t you let the girls alone for one night, Son?” and
Fuller’s laugh was unctuous.

“’Pon my word it’s business.”

“Thought nobody had to trouble their heads about business up at the
factory except Barton?”

“But Barton may not be there always,” laughed the superintendent,
although the suggestion of the manager’s omnipotence did not please
him. Everybody praised Frank Barton’s business acumen. Mayberry, being
Barton’s close friend, knew just how weak the fellow really was! This
was Mayberry’s thought; but he made no display of this feeling, saying:

“It really is business, Colonel. I am sorry not to be able to join you
and the other gentlemen. But we really all have to work up there at the
factory. Barton may get the bulk of the credit. You know how it is when
a fellow once gets into the limelight.”

“Yes,” chuckled Fuller. “But they tell me a lime never gets into the
limelight. Don’t tell me Frank Barton is to be counted among the citrus
fruit.”

“Never!” responded Mayberry. “But, then, there are others working for
the Hapwood-Diller Company too who are not lemons. Good-night.”

He went down the steps whistling cheerfully and Mr. Fuller looked
quizzically after him.

“Bright young fellow, just the same,” murmured the man. “Perhaps may be
made more useful, even, than Barton. But I fear neither Helen nor the
wife would stand for _him_ as a dinner guest; whereas, Barton----”

These cryptic observations were unheard by Mayberry of course. And the
frown on his brow belied his cheerful whistle and airy remarks to Mr.
Fuller. He got into his car, started it, and drove away from the hotel
with the secret feeling that he would enjoy running over a dog.

He kept on through the old part of Mailsburg and down past the docks
and over the Stone Bridge. The creek was a wide, oilily flowing
stream--save in the time of the spring freshets. He took the Creek
Road and rolled easily out of town and along past the farms and wooded
strips which intervened between Mailsburg and Norville.

He drove slowly and looked at the illuminated dial of the clock before
him frequently. It was plain that he had a rendezvous here in the open.
Some one has said: “If you have a secret to tell, select the middle
of a ten-acre lot.” Mayberry’s appointment suggested secrecy, for he
finally stopped near the bank of the creek with an open, sloping field
on the other hand, and no cover but a rock beside the road.

There was shadow enough about the rock, however, to protect the figure
of a man on the landward side. But the scent of his tobacco permeated
the air.

“Hello, Blaisdell?” Jim Mayberry said quietly and questioningly, having
brought his car to a stop just opposite this rock.

“Welcome, dear boy,” was the prompt reply. The waiting man stretched
his long limbs and came out of the shadow, still puffing his pipe, to
rest a foot upon the step of the car. Mayberry lit a cigarette and
pinched out the glowing end of the match before dropping it. “What’s
the news?” asked Blaisdell.

“Kind of bad--for you and me,” Mayberry admitted.

“What do you mean? Doesn’t that order go through?”

“It may not. I’m no intriguer, Blaisdell. I can keep you informed; but
I am not up in diplomacy. Barton has heard some yarn about you fellows.
He is for turning the order down--flat.”

“Can’t you influence him? I thought you and he were thicker than the
hair on a dog’s neck.”

“We’ve always been chums,” drawled Mayberry. “That doesn’t give me any
hold over Frank’s processes of reasoning. And he can talk me off my
feet. I didn’t agree to do the impossible, Blaisdell. If the order goes
through the best I can do is to rush it.”

“Yet you expect to get your rake-off,” sneered the other.

“That’s my legitimate graft. It’s for letting everything go through
smoothly. You know, in my position, I can favor your company,
Blaisdell.”

“It doesn’t seem that you can--not if this order clogs the chute. I am
frank to tell you, Jim, we’ve got to get those goods without question
or we shall be in untold trouble.”

“Ye-as,” drawled the superintendent, “so I inferred. That is what is
bothering Barton. He seems to be wise to the state of your credit.”

“He doesn’t _know_ it,” snapped the other. “He only suspects. Nobody
knows it but Billings, Hempstead, me and--you.”

“And I’m sitting tight and saying nothing. I want my rake-off on the
order of course--By jinks, I _need_ it! Money is as scarce with me
just now as gold filling in a hen’s teeth.”

“Then do something to help us,” urged Blaisdell.

“I’ll do all I can. If I were in charge--Oh, well! I _could_ do
something in that case.”

“Say! any chance of that happening?” demanded the other and with
eagerness.

“I--don’t--know. There may be. Frank has got the war fever. Fact! Any
fellow that got exempted as easy as he did----”

“By the way,” asked Blaisdell, “how did you get past the board?”

“Conscientious objector,” replied Mayberry glibly. “Sure! My mother and
father were Quakers and I often attended the Friends’ Meeting House,”
and he laughed.

“You are a liar, Jim,” said the other frankly. “The Quakers are putting
their young men into the Red Cross and all such work. That claim
don’t go. I believe it cost you money. Doc Flammer has bought a new
runabout--and it’s a better car than you drive, Jim. I believe that
foxy medico knows how to feather his nest.”

“I really have a bad heart,” said the superintendent of the
Hapwood-Diller Company seriously. “Quite a murmur. You can hear it
sometimes without the stethoscope.”

“But the doc never advised you to cut out the tobacco, did he?” drily
queried Blaisdell, as Mayberry lit another cigarette at the coal of
his first. “Now, see here, to get back to biz: You say Barton has the
fever?”

“He’s wanted to go all along. You should hear him talk! He makes me
sick!” scoffed the superintendent. “If he should go I shall step into
his shoes _pro tem_. He wants to go to the officers’ training camp
at Lake Quehasset. _Then_ I might be able to help you fellows--and
myself--Blaisdell.”

“You think Barton will immediately turn down our order? Before he goes
away--if he does go?”

“I believe he has already.” Mayberry gave no particulars, but he spoke
of the letter the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company had ordered
written that afternoon. It was not to his advantage to say anything
about Ethel Clayton and the confidence Barton had in her good sense and
ability.

“Postpone the sending of that letter, Jim,” said Blaisdell hastily. “It
has not left the office yet, has it?”

“I do not believe so. It was too late for the last mail,” Mayberry
agreed. But he was puzzled.

“I’ll tell you what I mean,” Blaisdell said, leaning nearer to the
superintendent. He laid a hand upon the latter’s shoulder. His lips
were close to Mayberry’s ear. Nobody could have heard then what he
said, not if they had been at Blaisdell’s elbow. And there was nobody
so near. A few minutes later the superintendent turned his car and
started back toward Mailsburg while Blaisdell strolled away in the
opposite direction. Then it was that a cramped figure rolled out from
the shadow on the creek side of the great rock.

“Those two chumps purty near made me late setting my lines,” observed
Boots Skinner under his breath. “The moon’ll be up in a few minutes and
then mebbe I’d git nabbed.

“Old Man Hammerly says that if I’m caught doing this ag’in he’ll give
me all the laws allows--an’ then some. The old jackdaw! I bet he never
gits the chance.

“That’s the way. Ain’t no chance for a poor feller, jest as dad says.
Such rich chaps as them two can plan to do all the devilment that they
want, and nobody dast touch ’em. But me! I ain’t let to ketch a mess
o’ fish in peace. Huh! Jest the same, me an’ dad will have a fish-fry
for breakfast,” and he grinned in the darkness, carefully baiting his
hooks.




CHAPTER V

THE DREAM OF A STAR


Mrs. Clayton was a Diller. She often stated this fact with pride.

“The Dillers, my dear, are among the very oldest and the very best
families in the country; and when one has family as every sensible
person recognizes, money is of secondary importance,” Ethel’s mother
insisted over and over, in season and out.

“All very well, dear,” agreed the girl cheerfully. “But money is more
essential to our daily comfort than blue blood. I presume I am glad I
have Diller blood in my veins. I am much gladder I have Diller brains
in my head; for they enable me to earn twenty dollars a week--more than
any other girl earns, I do believe, in Mailsburg.”

Mrs. Clayton, with all her horror of things common, could not deny
that Israel Diller had been the saviour of the family by his business
ability. He went into trade and he made good in it. By grace of
his doing so, and leaving her a few shares of the Hapwood-Diller
Company--and Grandon Fuller’s wife a good many--both the Claytons and
the Fullers were benefitted. Indeed, Mrs. Clayton and Ethel lived much
more comfortably in the little cottage at the end of Burnaby Street
by grace of the dividends from those shares than they had while Mr.
Clayton was alive.

“But I sometimes wonder,” Mrs. Clayton sighed, “how it came about
that Mehitable Fuller and I should have been so unevenly treated by
Great-uncle Israel. Mehitable never did a hand’s turn for old Mr.
Diller in her life. While you can remember yourself, Ethel, although
you were but a tiny girl, that the old gentleman was brought here that
time he had typhoid and he was a care on my hands for six months.”

“Oh, Mother!”

“I’m not begrudging the care,” her mother hastened to say. “And of
course his lawyer afterward brought me the money for his board--six
dollars a week for twenty-seven weeks. And I signed a paper saying it
was all I could expect. Still--Well! if he had been alone in his own
home and had had to hire a trained nurse and all that he’d have paid
out a lot more money than he did.”

“Now, Mother, never mind all that,” Ethel urged.

“No, I realize it doesn’t sound nice,” Mrs. Clayton agreed. “But it
seems funny. When I see those Fullers driving around so haughtily, and
read about Mehitable, that I went to school with, and that pug-nosed
girl of hers----”

“Mercy! don’t let anybody hear you speak of Helen Fuller’s nose in such
terms,” laughed Ethel. “And Helen is pretty. You’ve got to acknowledge
that.”

“Her nose _is_ a pug,” declared Mrs. Clayton. “That’s got nothing to do
with those stocks. Great-uncle Israel’s will was peculiar. So they all
say. No administrator mentioned. And he died with Gran Fuller right in
the house----”

“Don’t!” begged Ethel. “You must not intimate any wrongdoing, when
there can have been no wrongdoing.”

“What do you know about it? And you but a chit of a girl at the time!”
demanded Mrs. Clayton. “Anyway, Gran Fuller was there, and he found the
will. Mr. Mestinger, the lawyer, was dead then.”

“But the witnesses were alive if the lawyer wasn’t. Of course it was
Mr. Diller’s honest will.”

“And he gave all that lump of money to Mehitable who never scarcely
spoke to him, and only a little, meaching few stocks of the
Hapwood-Diller Company to me. Oh, well, small favors thankfully
received. The money’s very welcome every quarter.”

Of course, Ethel was the recipient of a fairly comfortable salary. But
they could not have lived so nicely as they did upon her weekly stipend
only. Moreover, it was but recently that the girl was able to earn the
amount at present paid her.

“And there was a time,” pursued Mrs. Clayton on this particular
evening, “when I came near selling the shares for a song.” She and
Ethel were sitting, after the dinner dishes were cleared up, on the
sheltered porch. “Grandon Fuller made me an offer for my stock. That
was just before Mr. Barton was made manager, and people said the
company was going to fail.”

“Mr. Barton has done wonders,” declared the girl with admiration.

“Oh, I don’t know,” responded her mother deprecatingly. “I suppose
business just chanced to change. But it’s lucky we held on to our
stock.”

“It was Mr. Barton who saved us and the rest of the small
stockholders,” the girl said firmly.

“Well, I suppose you must say so. I presume you feel some gratitude
to him for raising your pay. You never would have got it without his
say-so.”

“I hope I earn it,” Ethel observed with some sharpness. “I believe I
am worthy of my wages, just as Mr. Barton is worthy of the credit of
having put the Hapwood-Diller Company on its feet.”

“Still talking shop?” asked the cheerful voice of Benway Chase. He had
come up the walk without the widow and her daughter hearing him till he
spoke.

“Oh, Ethel is singing the praises of that wonderful Mr. Barton, as
usual,” her mother said.

“I’ll join in,” Ben Chase chuckled, and he sat down on the step of the
porch to fill and light his pipe. “We’ve got to hand it to Mr. Barton,
Mrs. Clayton. He did another good deed to-day. Promised to take me into
the offices.”

“Oh, Ben!” exclaimed the girl in sheer delight. “Did you speak to him
as I advised you?”

“Certainly did. I got tired of waiting on the pleasure of those other
people who had promised me a job. I have spent every cent we can
afford getting a business course and just because I am left-handed the
business men I have seen hem and haw over hiring me--or even giving me
a chance to show them I am as quick as a fellow with two hands.”

“Dear me, Bennie, don’t talk in that way,” murmured Mrs. Clayton.

“Nobody wants a fellow with one hand--not really!” exclaimed the young
man with vigor. “They won’t take me in the army--though a fellow could
work a machine gun very well with one paw,” and he laughed without
managing to get much mirth into the sound.

“But your Mr. Barton is different,” he added, turning to Ethel. “I saw
him to-day at lunch hour--while you were out, Ethel. He never said a
word about my bum wing. By the way, did you know he was going away?”

“Who’s going away?” asked Mrs. Clayton, scenting gossip.

“Not Mr. Barton?” cried her daughter quickly.

“Spoke as though he expected to be absent from the offices in the near
future. Said you and that Jim Mayberry would break me in all right.
What did he mean if it wasn’t that he expected to be absent?”

The girl looked at him breathlessly and her face was actually pale.
Mrs. Clayton drawled:

“I suppose he must mean to take a vacation.”

“That’s not it, is it?” Benway Chase asked Ethel, realizing that she
was deeply moved.

“It’s the war!” gasped the girl.

“The war?” rejoined her mother. “What’s that to do with Mr. Barton?
He’s exempt, isn’t he?”

“He will enlist. I knew he would!” The girl’s hands were clasped in
real agony and her voice showed imminent tears. “Oh, I knew he would!”

“Not really?” exclaimed Benway, forgetting to keep his pipe alight.
“Mr. Barton can’t be spared, can he?”

“I suspected all along how he felt about it,” moaned the girl. “Ever
since April when war was declared--even before.”

“But, goodness! there are so many other men to go,” cried her mother.
“And you were just saying that he was necessary to the well-being of
the Hapwood-Diller Company, Ethel. Surely he will not desert us.”

“The business is in very good shape again--thanks to him,” Ethel
answered, trying to recover her composure. “I suppose he feels that
now, at least, he can go to the officers’ training camp. And if we get
along all right I just know he will go to France.”

Benway whistled--low and thoughtfully. “He’s that kind of a chap, I
guess,” he observed. “Goodness knows, this town is full of those who
think differently. The boards had the hardest time getting their full
quota for this first draft. There’s got to be a general awakening
before the second call comes----”

“But war is dreadful!” cried Mrs. Clayton.

“It must be. But we haven’t come to a realization of it yet or we’d all
be glad to try to help keep it in Europe, instead of letting it dribble
over here after militarism has ruined the less prepared countries over
there. This war is going to mean a good deal. The government is awfully
particular about the men they take right now; but they won’t be so
particular before it is all over.

“Why!” cried the young fellow with a break in his voice that showed a
deeper emotion, “even the Red Cross or the Y. M. C. A. won’t accept for
service a fellow with a single solitary thing the matter with him!”

Ethel, who had slipped down into a seat on the step beside him,
suddenly patted his shoulder in a sisterly way. She knew that he had
tried to serve his country under the banner of the Cross of Peace and
had been refused because of his withered arm.

“Heigho!” added Benway, shrugging his shoulders and swallowing his
emotion, “that’s neither here nor there. Mr. Barton spoke as though he
expected to leave soon, anyway. I expect Ethel, here, will pretty near
be boss of those offices while he is gone. How about it, Ethel? Going
to be a hard taskmaster to yours truly?”

“I am afraid if Mr. Barton goes that my influence there will be curbed
rather than increased,” the girl said with gravity.

“No!”

“Naturally Mr. Mayberry will be boss. Mr. Mayberry does not consider me
as capable as does Mr. Barton.”

“Jim Mayberry!” exclaimed Ben. “He’s dead in love with you, they say.”

The girl’s head came up and she turned a haughty look upon her friend.

“Do you consider that complimentary to me?” she demanded.

“No. But complimentary to his good sense,” returned Benway. “I don’t
know much about Mayberry; only that he hangs about the Bellevue too
much.”

“You’ve said it all,” Ethel declared, with less sternness. “I do not
like Mr. Mayberry.”

“All right. I shan’t like him, either, then,” said Benway cheerfully.
“But, goodness, girl! you can’t blame men for falling in love with you.
I wonder the whole town doesn’t tail along after you when you walk down
the street.”

She laughed at him then--and with him.

“There is one thing about your compliments, Ben,” she said. “They may
lack grace; but they are unmistakable. Ridiculous! There are hundreds
of girls in Mailsburg better looking than I am.”

“Now, did I say anything about looks?” he asked her wickedly. “It’s
your sweet disposition that makes you so many friends.”

“Like Jim Mayberry, I suppose?” she said in some disgust.

They continued to wrangle in a friendly way. Mrs. Clayton, frankly
yawning, bade them good-night. The moment her mother withdrew Ethel’s
manner changed. She removed herself a little from Benway’s vicinity and
her witticisms ceased.

“I believe I shall retire early myself, Ben,” she said. “This has been
a trying day. I--I shall be glad to have you in the offices with us.”

“Shall you?” There was something in his tone that increased her
seriousness.

“If I can do anything there to help you, let me do it,” she said
earnestly. “You know we have always been such chums, Ben.”

“Haven’t we?” Again the disturbing accent. She started to rise. He
caught her hand. “Wait,” he said. “Let me say a little something to
you, Ethel.”

“Ben! Ben! Had you better? You know----”

“I know--everything you can tell me,” he interrupted bitterly. “I know
I am only half a man. A fellow shy a wing hasn’t much chance in this
world. I ought to know it after all my experience. Especially as the
folks have no money to back me. But I have a whole brain----”

“I’ve always told you that, Ben,” she hastened to say. “A perfectly
good brain. I would not harp so much on that withered arm.”

“No, perhaps you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t unless the old arm happened to
be hitched to your shoulder, as it is to mine. No, it is easy enough to
say to a cripple, ‘Forget it.’ Wait till you try it yourself! Though,
Heaven forbid! I hope you will never suffer such a handicap, Ethel.”

“Oh, Benway!”

“Now, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, Ethel,” he returned, and
patted her hand. “Fact is, I feel rather toppy to-night myself. I know
that Mr. Barton is taking me on for just what he thinks is in me, and
no more. He must think that a withered arm will not make me less useful
around the offices of the Hapwood-Diller Company. Influence is not
getting me this footing.

“And he was kind enough to say,” went on the boy, “that he saw no
reason why I should not rise there as he had risen. He told me how
he began in one of the shops and worked up. Of course, I am not
beginning just in that way; but he says that a practical knowledge
of the mechanical end of the business is not absolutely necessary to
advancement.

“If I make good, Ethel--if I prove that the stuff is in me to get up in
the business world, after all----”

“Of all your friends I shall be the one who will be the most delighted,
Ben,” she interrupted, rising now with finality. “Don’t forget that
I have always said it was in you to make something of yourself.
Even if your parents could not afford to send you to college, I
know--absolutely know--you will make your mark.”

“Well, yes,” he said, rather piqued that she had not let him finish.
She stood above him now, looking down.

“Good-night, Benway. I suppose you will come to the offices on Monday?”

“Yes, I’ll see you then, Ethel, every day,” he said wistfully.

“Good-night,” she repeated and went quickly within. Once inside
the screen door she watched his shadowy figure down the path. “‘No
influence’?” she murmured. “He does not suspect how I fairly had to beg
Mr. Barton to give him a chance! Poor Benway! Poor, poor boy!”

The girl went on to her bedroom. She stood a moment in the darkness.

“Frank Barton going--leaving--” she gasped. “Oh, why can’t he see? Why
can’t he see?” she added, moaning.

Then she began her preparations for bed.

Benway Chase crossed the road and entered the field that divided his
own home from the end of Burnaby Street. This was a surburban locality.
There was the fine smell of new-mown hay in his nostrils. Half way
across the field he stumbled upon a cock of hay that had been thrown up
for the night, and he fell upon it, rolling upon his back luxuriously
and gazing back.

There was a light in a certain window of the Clayton Cottage. He had
watched it many a night, for he knew that it was the window of Ethel’s
room. Above the rooftree hung a brilliant star. He had watched that,
too, often and again. And when the light in Ethel’s room was snuffed
out he fixed his eyes on the star and dreamed.

It was only a boy’s dream at best. It was a foolish dream, perhaps. But
Benway Chase often dreamed it.

He was fully a year older than Ethel Clayton; but sometimes she made
him feel very much younger than she. Dreamer by nature, he; and she one
of those practical souls that chafe in the bodies of women. At least,
they chafe where women’s growth is hampered. But Ethel was numbered
of the emancipated. She was a business woman. Moreover, she was a
successful business woman.

As she had said, no girl in Mailsburg in all probability earned a
larger wage than she did. She had a grasp upon the details of the
business of the Hapwood-Diller Company that fitted her without
question for a position as important as that of Jim Mayberry for
instance. Indeed, she was better informed and more capable than even
Frank Barton realized.

The manager merely found her surprisingly helpful on occasion. He
respected her; he admired her good business sense displayed at these
times. Ethel Clayton did not wish to be admired by the manager for any
such reason.

Perhaps hers, too, was a dream of a star.




CHAPTER VI

TWO GOOD-BYES


After the porter, who dusted and removed the waste paper, Mabel Skinner
was the first of the office force to arrive at the Hapwood-Diller
Company the next morning.

Her startled face was preternaturally grave on this occasion. Before
she even removed her hat and the tight little jacket she wore, the girl
went to the mail basket on Ethel Clayton’s desk, dumped the outgoing
letters on its flat surface, and ran through them quickly, scrutinizing
each address. She did this twice and then puzzlement, as well as
gravity, showed in her sharp features. She stacked the letters slowly
again in the basket, deep in thought.

Then she went to the letter files. She found under the B heading a
quantity of correspondence relating to the Bogata Company of Norville.
But there was nothing of recent date. It seemed no letter had been
written the day before by the Hapwood-Diller Company to the Bogata
people.

“Well,” the girl sighed, “I know Boots is an awful liar. But this time
he fooled me. Guess I’ll keep my nose out of what don’t concern me. But
that Boots!”

And that evening she gave the recreant Boots a most decisive thrashing
out behind the barn. For any older Skinner that could not trounce a
younger Skinner, male or female, was not worthy of the clan.

Mabel’s appearance at her desk when the rest of the office force
arrived caused much comment.

“Life is short and time is fleeting,” said Sydney, the bookkeeper. “We
are warned of the Great Change to come. Little Skinner is here on time
and at work.”

“That happens three days before you die, Syd,” responded Mabel
sepulchrally, and made no further explanation, not even to Ethel.

Ethel went about her work with some feeling of depression. Barton had
said nothing directly to her about going away. Indeed, he was not
likely to take Ethel Clayton into his confidence in private matters.
Yet she understood now, from several things he had been doing of late,
that he had it in mind to absent himself from the offices.

Jim Mayberry was in conference with the general manager on more than
one occasion during the next few days. Ethel could only be thankful
that the superintendent seemed to have too much on his mind to bother
her. He did not even mention her refusal to ride with him in his car.
But the girl thought more than once of the possibility of Mayberry’s
becoming objectionable when Barton was gone and he, the superintendent,
had charge of affairs.

On Monday Benway Chase came into the offices. Ethel had paved the
way for his reception by her associates, and Benway was made to feel
welcome at once. Only Mayberry seemed surprised to see him.

“Why, say!” drawled the superintendent, “what does Barton expect to
make of _you_?”

“I’m after your job, Mr. Mayberry,” responded Benway, smiling into the
rather sneering face of the older man. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not if you can cop it,” said the other. “But it takes a two-fisted
man to handle some of the huskies we’ve got in the shops. Don’t forget
that.”

The intimation was brutal, but the boy with the withered arm only paled
a little about the lips.

“You know,” he said coolly, “we left-handed chaps have all the luck.
Ask any ball fan.”

Mayberry laughed shortly and passed on. Ethel was particularly kind to
Benway for the rest of that day, and Mabel Skinner, who also had heard
the superintendent, stuck out her tongue at his retreating figure.

“He’s such a nasty thing!” she whispered to Ethel. “I wish his old
flivver would try to climb a telegraph pole with him--or go into the
ditch!”

For Skinner was a strong partisan of Ethel’s. Her friends were
Skinner’s friends and her enemies Skinner’s particular foes. Besides,
the younger girl had at once taken a fancy to Benway Chase. In looks
alone the young fellow had the advantage of any man Mabel Skinner had
ever seen before--not barring the general manager, whom she worshipped
as a kind of god.

A smile from Benway Chase would turn almost any girl’s head. He had the
darlingest curls! His complexion was finer and clearer than any girl’s
Skinner knew. There were shades of brown and red in his cheeks that
reminded her of a ripe russet apple.

“My!” she whispered to herself, her china-blue eyes staring from her
head more staringly than usual, “wouldn’t I just like to put my two
hands into his hair and pull it--ever so gently? And his eyes are just
as lovely as our setter-pup’s. Oh, my! And of course he’s set his heart
on Ethel!”

She was not jealous of Ethel. Skinner was much too modest to feel
such an emotion for one whom she so much admired. She considered
Benway Chase as far above her as the moon and stars. She thought them
beautiful in much the same way as she admired Benway.

In the middle of that week Ethel was called into the manager’s office
at an unusual hour--not long before closing time. He usually dictated
his letters in the morning. But she carried her notebook and pencil
when she answered the summons.

“No letters, Miss Clayton,” Barton said, smiling and wheeling sideways
in his chair to face her. “Sit down. This is a business conference----”

“Oh! Mr. Mayberry----”

“I’ve talked to Jim,” said Barton quickly. “I’ve been hammering things
into him this fortnight, off and on. He has finally got to the point
where he admits he may be able to swing things here for a bit while I
run away.”

Ethel flashed him a glance that he could not help but note. He raised
an admonishing hand.

“Don’t think I am running away from duty, Miss Clayton. I believe we
are in such shape now--the Hapwood-Diller Company, I mean--that the
business will run smoothly under the guidance of Mr. Mayberry--and you.
I am banking a good deal on you, Miss Clayton,” his kindly smile again
lighting up his face.

“On me, Mr. Barton?” she hesitated.

“You are such a perfectly capable person, Miss Clayton,” he said. “I
believe you have a better grasp on details here than almost anybody
else. Of course, Mr. Mayberry and I ought to know fully as much
as you do; but the other day you proved that we did not,” and he
laughed. “That Bogata matter, you remember. We had overlooked the
very point which we should have remembered. You did not overlook it.
Therefore----You see?

“That is exactly what I mean. Jim is all right. He has a grasp of the
mechanical part of the business. But you must run the office end, more
or less----”

“But, Mr. Barton! you are not going to remain away for long, are you?”
she interposed.

“I cannot say, Miss Clayton,” he returned gravely. “We none of us know
what this war may amount to. I only know that I can be of some help
if the war continues; and with my experience in the Guard I should be
preparing to give my country all the help in my power if I am called
on. I am leaving for the training camp at Lake Quehasset this evening.”

She could not suppress a murmur, and the pallor of her cheek was
marked, but he noticed neither.

“The exemption board allowed my claim of business need. But I am
promised to the service if the business here can get along without me.
The time has now come to try it,” and he laughed a little whimsically.
“You know, a dead man is seldom missed, no matter how important his
place in life seems to be. After a little somebody is found to fill his
shoes. I fancy it will not be so hard, Miss Clayton, to fill mine.

“I am depending on Mr. Mayberry and you, Miss Clayton, to keep the
stockholders of the company satisfied that I can be spared. We have
some months’ training in camp in any case. I have felt the call from
‘over there’ for a long time. I own frankly,” he added, his voice
vibrant with emotion, “that had I been free, I should not have waited
for our Government to declare war before getting into the scrimmage.

“But never mind that! I was held here. You know something of the
circumstances we faced two years ago when I took hold. Now we seem to
have got out of the mire. We’re standing on firm ground. With ordinary
care everything should go smoothly with the Hapwood-Diller Company. Can
I depend on you to do your part, Miss Clayton?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Barton! I will! I will!” cried the girl with clasped
hands, but looking away from him.

“Fine! Help Mr. Mayberry all you can. He’s rather brusk, perhaps, but
he knows the business. Still----

“I’ve one favor to ask of you, Miss Clayton. It is important, and it is
particular. I want you to write to me.”

She looked at him then. But there was nothing in his serious face to
warrant the slight flush that came into her cheeks.

“I’d like to have you write me about once a week. Consult nobody as to
what you write, but just detail as briefly as you please matters as
they occur--business matters and whatever you may think will give me a
correct impression of the situation of affairs in the factory and the
office.

“I haven’t the least idea,” he added, once again smiling, “that things
will not run along all right. But I shall be anxious--nervous, if you
will. Mayberry will write, of course. But you will look on things with
quite different eyes from the way he will look at them. In the first
place, you are a woman and you have a different mental slant upon every
occurrence from that of a man, it seems to me. I am sure anything you
may have to report will be illuminating.”

“Yes, Mr. Barton.”

“Will you do it, Miss Clayton?”

“Am I to understand I am to render a weekly report and keep the matter
secret from everybody--even from Mr. Mayberry?”

“I am exacting no spy-duty from you!” he said hastily. “That is not my
meaning.”

“I understand you perfectly, I think,” Ethel said gently. “You
undoubtedly will be anxious.”

“But I want the truth--the exact truth, Miss Clayton,” Barton went on.

“Yes, I understand that too,” she replied.

They arose at the same moment and Frank Barton put out his hand. “You
will be of great help to me, I am sure, Miss Clayton,” he said, her
hand lost for a moment in the embrace of his larger palm. “You have
been of sure and practical assistance to me on many occasions. I know
you will be of equal aid to Mayberry. Now, good-bye, Miss Clayton. I
hope I shall not add much to your burdens.”

“Oh, Mr. Barton! I am glad to do anything within reason. I feel that it
is but a small thing I do compared with what you must face.”

At that he flushed suddenly, and like a boy. “Oh that!” he murmured.
“My duty has held me here. Now duty calls me elsewhere. Duty is our
master, Miss Clayton. Good-bye.”

“And--I hope you--will return to us safely,” she said, her eyes filling
with tears.

“Thank you, Miss Clayton. I hope to come back all right. I believe
I shall,” he said cheerfully, and sat down immediately to sort some
papers upon his desk. He did not look again in her direction as she
went out of the private office.

He heard the raucous note of an automobile horn a little later.
He stacked the documents together and stuck them in their proper
pigeonhole. He was leaving his desk open for Jim Mayberry to use if he
wished.

Stepping quickly to the window Barton saw the Fuller car stopping at
the curb. Helen was driving, and was alone. He took down his hat and
dust-coat and passed rapidly through the office. But at the outer door
he stopped a moment and looked back. He faced the entire office force
from that position.

“Be good children till I return--all of you,” he said, laughing. “I
am banking heavy on you, Sydney. Good-bye, all. I want to hear good
reports of you while I am away.”

Mayberry was to meet him later and go to the train with him. But Helen
Fuller had come to take him for a spin and for a little talk on this,
his last day in town. Somehow, he had not been invited to dinner as
she suggested. Was it because Grandon Fuller after all considered the
general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company of less importance to his
schemes, now that he was going away?

“Dear _me_, Mr. Barton,” sighed Helen, dexterously turning the car, “my
conscience _condemns_ me.”

“Why so?”

“I fear something I may have said is sending you off like this--so
_suddenly_--and to train for the army. Dear me! suppose you should be
killed or wounded?”

“Scarcely likely in the training camp,” he returned, happy in the
concern the girl seemed to show.

“Oh, but _afterward_! For I know you will go over there, Mr. Barton. I
feel it! And if anything _I_ have said----”

“I am sure,” he told her quietly, “that you have said nothing to me
or to any of your gentlemen acquaintances regarding our duty in this
trying time that was not perfectly justified, Miss Fuller.”

“Oh, do you _think_ so?” she cried. “Do you _know_, Mr. Barton, I
am greatly tempted to go to France _myself_. Some girls I know have
already gone. You know, really, it puts one on the _qui vive_ to hear
so much about it--and--and all that,” she added rather vaguely.

He was so much in earnest himself, he felt so strongly the exaltation
of his decision, that he did not notice the futility of her speech. And
then Helen Fuller was strikingly, if a little flamboyantly, pretty. He
nodded with pursed lips.

“It’s a job we all have to decide for ourselves. I can imagine how you
feel, Miss Fuller. As for myself, I’ve got to be in it!”

“It’s too bad,” she drawled, “that you couldn’t influence Morry Copley
to go with you.”

“Well, Mr. Copley now will have to decide for himself, won’t he?”

She laughed. “It seems he has allowed Mrs. Copley to decide for him,”
she said.

Somehow their conversation did not take that personal tinge which Helen
desired. To tell the truth, a girl cannot give her escort just the
right feeling of intimacy when both her eyes and her hands are engaged
in guiding a motor-car. Helen finally dropped Barton at his lodgings in
time for dinner, and their good-bye was much more casual than she had
intended it should be.

“But I shall go over to the camp to see you,” she promised, as she
wheeled away from the curb. “Best of luck!”

The man stood bareheaded till the girl had turned the corner. But that
night when he closed his eyes, in his Pullman berth, it was the face of
another girl, with brown eyes tear-filled, that rose to his vision and
dissolved only when he sank to sleep.




CHAPTER VII

LEADING UP TO A CLIMAX


For Ethel Clayton the days that immediately followed the departure
of the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company were merely busy days.
Positively nothing happened. The particular work that came to her was
not different from that which had been her portion for some months;
only in her oversight of things in general (and that oversight
secretive) was she differently engaged.

She took her book and pencil into the private office each morning at
the usual hour and took dictation from Jim Mayberry.

Mayberry was not the clear-headed, forceful thinker that Barton was.
But his letters were brief and to the point nevertheless; he was not a
numbskull. Nor did he lack a grasp of business details quite necessary
to the carrying on of the affairs of the big concern. He worked
faithfully, seemed to neglect nothing; and though he did not admit it,
Ethel felt sure he was thankful to her when she smoothed the crudeness
of his English, or brought out more clearly the points he desired to
make in his correspondence.

To her satisfaction he did not at first show those amorous proclivities
which had so annoyed her in the past. His thoughts seemed to be
centered on the business of trying to fill both Barton’s and his own
jobs. Or was it that Jim Mayberry had something on his mind other than
the business affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company to trouble him?

The office force, of course, buzzed at first because of the departure
of Mr. Barton. But every individual was on his best behavior. They had
all liked the general manager; and, perhaps, they had visions of his
returning suddenly and taking them to task for sins of both omission
and commission.

Mayberry left the people in the outer office strictly and entirely
alone; even Sydney came to Ethel at times for advice, or to report some
slight matter which needed to be “put up to the boss.” It had been so
before Barton went away, although the girl had not then remarked it.
She was still “the buffer” between the small annoyances of the office
and the man at the head of affairs.

Grandon Fuller came in one day and had a somewhat extended conference
with the manager _pro tem_. Ethel noted that the holder of so large
a block of the company’s stock seemed to be very friendly with
Mayberry, whereas when Mr. Macon Hammerly came in, as was his wont, he
always timed his calls so as to miss Mayberry. The shrewd old grain
dealer was frank to say that he did not like the present head of the
Hapwood-Diller Company.

“Jim always looked to me like a well-fed fox,” grumbled Hammerly to
Ethel. “I always wonder who’s pullet he’s just swallowed.”

Although Mayberry did not greatly disturb Ethel’s quiet pool of
existence, Benway Chase seemed to have been an agitating pebble flung
into it. Her old friend took hold of his duties with all the energy
and keenness of perception that she knew he would display, once he
was given a chance. Sydney and the rest of the office force liked him
immensely.

On her own part, however, Ethel found him trying. He was promptly
at her gate every morning to accompany her to work; and at night he
escorted her home. It had been like that when they went to school
together. But Ethel felt altogether different about it now. She did not
like to be made conspicuous or to be appropriated in such a fashion.
And when Benway undertook to go to lunch with her, she put her foot
down firmly.

Yet, she could not hurt his feelings. Because of his affliction she had
been all her life striving to be particularly kind to Benway. From her
earliest remembrance, when she had felt spasms of pity and sympathy for
her little playmate and had impulsively run to him to pat his cheek
and say, “Poor, poor Bennie!” to this very chance she had begged for
him with the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company, Ethel Clayton had
mothered the boy. Naturally and quite unconsciously he took advantage
of her kindness.

She shrank from having the rest of the office force suspect any
tender relation between herself and the boy. “Boy” was of course the
term in which she thought of him. And when he undertook to time his
absence from the office so as to accompany her to the restaurant which
she usually patronized, she had to put a stop to that. She quietly
inaugurated a system of “taking turn about” for lunch hour which pretty
well put it out of Benway’s power to leave at the same time she did.

Likewise, she went farther away, to the Orleans Tea Room, instead of
to the place at which it was the custom of most of the Hapwood-Diller
office force to have their midday meal. The tea room was a more
expensive place and was largely patronized by “up town” folk; and it
was because of this change in her habits that Ethel chanced to learn,
not two weeks after the manager’s departure for the training camp,
something that she thought really did not concern her, but which
interested her immensely, as it was connected with Frank Barton.

She saw one noon a gaily, though beautifully, dressed and unmistakable
figure entering the tea room ahead of her--that of Helen Fuller. Her
escort was Morrison Copley--one of those men whose names made Ethel’s
lips involuntarily curl. And yet, as far as Ethel Clayton knew, there
was nothing bad about Morry Copley.

She considered it a misfortune that the only empty table should be
next the one occupied by those two from what Macon Hammerly called
“the swagger part of town.” Miss Fuller looked the employee of the
Hapwood-Diller Company over with a cold disdain which might have hurt
cruelly a supersensitive soul. Ethel’s was too well balanced a nature
to be disturbed by the ill breeding of the other girl.

“You boys are going to be _terribly_ put to it for styles this fall,”
Helen was drawling, her elbows on the table and her hands cupped to
hold her pretty chin. Somebody had told her that the pose became her.
“Everything offered for masculine wear will have a military cut.”

“I don’t see why we’re to be put to it,” returned Morry, gazing at the
girl before him with doglike devotion. “Belted things always did look
well on me, you know, Nell. I’m slim waisted.”

“Slim in every way, Morry,” the girl said laughing. “Morrison Copley,
S. S. quite fits you. Slim slacker. My! _I’d_ be ashamed if _I_ were a
man----”

“Plenty of fellows are going. Those that like army life and--and all
that,” complained Morry. “I don’t see why you should hound me, all
the time, Nell. And mothaw really would make an awful row if I said I
wanted to go.”

“If you even _said_ so, Morry?” she scoffed.

“Say, aren’t you satisfied?” demanded the young man with more energy
than usual. “You say you made Frank Barton go to camp. How many scalps
do you want to hang in your wigwam?”

“Your scalp, as you call it, would look pretty good to me,” she
laughed. “I want to send all the fellows I can. Bradley’s half
promised. He was in the Guard for two years, but got out because he was
too lazy to drill, I suppose,” Miss Fuller said.

“Pooh, they’re only stalling,” grumbled Morry. “You know just about how
far Brad will get at that training camp. And Barton’s only going for a
show. They’ll never get to France, any of them.”

“Why don’t _you_ try it, then? If there’s no danger, that should suit
_you_, Morry!”

“I tell you what!” exclaimed the young man indignantly and forgetting
his drawl, “if I go into this thing I’ll go the whole figure, don’t
forget that! If other fellows go to France I shall go. I won’t hunt me
a soft job here where I can wear a uniform and never smell powder.”

Helen Fuller looked at him and thoughtfully.

“I wonder, Morry, if you really _would_,” she finally said.

Ethel could not help hearing this. Indeed, the heedlessness with which
the two conversed on their private affairs in public made it imperative
that all within earshot should know what they were talking about.

Slight as was Ethel’s interest in the two, and in their affairs, one
point did not escape her. It could not fail to impress the girl’s mind
and linger in her thoughts.

Had Frank Barton gone to the training camp because of the bite of Helen
Fuller’s tart tongue? Miss Fuller was taking much commendation for
inspiring the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company with patriotism.
Was Barton’s brand of patriotism of that character? How much influence
did the girl really have over him?

These questions could not be stilled in Ethel’s mind. She reverted to
them time and again. Helen’s claim that her influence drove her young
men friends to patriotic service seemed to be believed by other people.
Somebody told Ethel on Sunday at church that Charlie Bradley and young
Copley had both gone to the officers’ camp.

“Of course, it’s more of a lark than anything else for most of those
who go,” said the person who told Ethel. “Fancy Morry Copley trying to
give orders in that squeaky voice of his!”

Ethel’s letters to Barton were strictly business, without being coldly
formal. She allowed them to sound a note of cool friendliness in the
beginning and at the close but nothing deeper. An expression of hope
for his good health was as warm a phrase as entered into them. His
polite, brief acknowledgments, addressed to her home, showed that
he considered their correspondence nothing more than a business
arrangement.

She realized that she was by no means the only person in Mailsburg
interested in the absent ones in camp and barracks. The town was
beginning to wake up to the exigencies of the war. The ministers prayed
for the boys on Sunday, and every social and charitable organization in
Mailsburg began to talk of work for the soldiers at least, whether or
not any of them really did much at first.

At this time in her heart Ethel hated the idea of war so desperately
that the many activities connected with the draft and the going away
and the war itself seemed to her mind both futile and non-beneficial.
If those young men really got as far as France, and into the trenches,
they would be killed. They were merely “cannon fodder” in that case.
And if they did not go--if the war ended, as some people said it would,
before many of them got over there--then all this talk and planning was
so much wasted breath and time and money.

It was a fact that, at this particular time, Ethel Clayton had little
interest save in her work and in the affairs of the Hapwood-Diller
Company--particularly in Frank Barton’s absence from his post and how
it might affect the concern for which they both worked.

Just as she felt that there were plenty of other men to go to the war
and that Barton might be spared, so she felt that there were already
too many women, both foolish and wise, giving their time and thought
to war work. The local papers began to be full of news of the various
activities of the several organizations in this connection. In addition
some of those desirous of notoriety were getting a heap of free
advertising.

“I declare!” said Mrs. Clayton, busily clicking her knitting needles,
“the _Clarion_ toots a loud note almost every day for that girl of
Mehitable Fuller’s. She’s first into one thing and then another--like a
spoiled kitten. And all this folderol about the war seems to give her
more of a chance than ever to show off.”

“I wonder,” said Ethel, thoughtfully, “if we ought not to think more
about it than we do, Mother? I sit here with my hands idle in the
evening. I wonder if all this knitting I see going on hasn’t a basis of
honest endeavor in it, after all?”

“Pshaw!” said her mother.

“I know it looks silly. Looks like a fad. One of the girls in the
office brings her knitting bag. She’s at the switchboard and has more
or less idle time. Instead of reading silly love stories as she used,
she knits.”

“What does she knit?”

“Why, she says she hopes it will turn out to be a sweater when she gets
it done; and if it is good enough she will give it to the Red Cross,”
and Ethel laughed gently.

“Humph!” mumbled Mrs. Clayton. “I wonder if she has a good pattern?”

Thus grew the stirrings of general interest in Mailsburg in the war and
in our preparations for entering it. Ethel realized amid her manifold
office duties that the undercurrent of their life was becoming more
strongly patriotic.

It was learned that at least one Mailsburg boy was already at the
front. It was true he had disappeared from town some years before, and
under a cloud; but his mother had always known where he was.

Now the _Clarion_ came out with a full page on Sunday, “Mailsburg’s
First Boy in France.” Sergeant Willy O’Rourke of General Pershing’s
forces had sent his mother several postal cards from “over there.” Here
they were reproduced, with a tintype of the sergeant and a sympathetic
wash-drawing of Mrs. O’Rourke--a little old woman living down by the
docks who said to the reporter:

“Shure an’ th’ O’Rourkes was all fighters. ’Tis no wonder Willy got
over there first. Them Garmans’ll have their own troubles now.”

And yet there was something in it that made the reader choke up. Macon
Hammerly had his brusk comment to make:

“It may be that Bill O’Rourke left town just ahead of the constable.
I remember well the red-headed gossoon. He wasn’t a mite better than
this Boots Skinner is now. But, by the holy poker! he’s a _man_.
There’s nothing soft and sissified about Bill. If Bill dies for his
country he’ll be doing something better than a whole lot of these
trifling, dawdling fellows will ever arrive at.”

If he dies for his country! That might be Frank Barton’s fate if he
went “over there.” The thought more than once brought Ethel Clayton
upright in bed at night. It sometimes wet her pillow with tears. Yet,
if it was the truth that Helen Fuller’s influence had urged Barton
away to the wars, Ethel was jealous of the other girl for it, and she
realized the fact with shame.

Affairs in the Hapwood-Diller Company offices continued much as usual
for several weeks. The directors seemed to think Jim Mayberry a
satisfactory substitute manager. Having the details of the business
at her finger tips as she had, Ethel was quite sure that the
superintendent was attending to his additional duties in an exemplary
manner.

Ethel checked up much of the work of the other members of the office
staff, especially in the correspondence end of the business, and it was
in looking over a schedule of stock to be ordered she made a discovery
that puzzled her.

Mayberry had now, of course, the ordering of supplies of all kinds;
but there was little in the manufacturing line that Ethel Clayton did
not know about. Here were certain grades of stock which she had no
idea were called for by any order then on the factory’s books already
contracted for.

Had Mr. Barton been doing the ordering she would have felt quite free
to hold up the schedule until she could speak to him about it. But she
feared Mayberry might be touchy in any such matter. He was jealous
of his rights, and she hesitated to give him a chance to say she was
overstepping the borders of her field of employment.

She went to the files and spent some time in checking off the grades of
supplies called for by the orders the factory already had contracted
for. And suddenly--it was quite a startling discovery--she came upon
the schedule of the Bogata Company’s order which she had every reason
to believe had been declined.

She had a clear remembrance of the letter she had written, Mr. Barton’s
approval of it, even the reason for the order being refused by the
Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company. This reason was connected with
the very purchase of these special supplies she had noted in the
puzzling schedule in her hand.

It could not be overlooked. There was something wrong in what she had
discovered.

Fearing she knew not what--a mistake on her own part, perhaps--she
waited until she could find Mayberry disengaged. When she knew he was
in the manager’s office and alone, Ethel ventured to knock upon the
door.




CHAPTER VIII

A PUZZLING SITUATION


Mayberry glanced up swiftly as she entered the office at his response.
He was rolling a cigarette which he finished and lighted, vouchsafing
her merely a casual nod. Very different treatment, this, from Frank
Barton’s unfailing courtesy.

“What’s on the docket, Ethel?” Mayberry asked, eyeing her through the
smoke that circled from his lips. “Anything wrong?”

“I am not at all sure that there is anything wrong, Mr. Mayberry,” she
replied, ignoring the chair he twisted about for her to occupy, and
standing at the end of the desk. “I have found something which puzzles
me so much that I thought it best to have you ratify the order before
it is sent.”

“What order?”

She placed before him the schedule for supplies which he had given to
one of the other girls to copy. “These are the items that puzzle me,”
she said, pointing to several which, in summing up, amounted to several
thousand dollars.

“Well?” he said, his gaze direct and not at all reassuring.

But Ethel Clayton was not to be easily put down. “I was not aware,”
she said quietly, “that any of our contracts now under way called for
goods of that grade.”

“Well?” he said again and in the same sneering tone.

“So I investigated,” Ethel pursued, apparently unshaken, “and I found
this.” She placed before him the papers relating to the Bogata order
which she felt so sure Mr. Barton had refused to consider.

“Huh? Why shouldn’t you find it?” Mayberry asked in apparent surprise.
Yet he flushed slightly, too.

“I have every reason to suppose that order refused. You know it, too.
You remember that Mr. Barton asked me to write a letter to that end. I
did so.”

“I remember there was something said about it,” Mayberry reflected.
“But I heard nothing more about it. Frank said nothing further to me.”

“No. Because it was settled, Mr. Mayberry,” the girl said more
confidently. “We cannot fill this order.”

“Indeed? Are you sure about that?” he asked, eyeing her with perfect
composure now.

“Why shouldn’t I be sure?” she retorted.

“Well--I don’t know,” he drawled. “If you wrote a letter refusing this
order, Frank saw it, of course?”

“He O.K.’d it,” she said.

“And it was sent?”

“So I presume.”

“It looks to me as though Frank must have changed his mind,” the
superintendent said with a sly little smile. “He said nothing more
to me about it. He would, it seems to me, if the order was finally
refused. Having once discussed the matter with me, seems to me he would
have done that.”

“But he thought you understood,” cried the girl, both puzzled and
alarmed. “You know he said the Bogata Company’s credit was involved.
It was not whether the order should be accepted or not that was under
discussion, Mr. Mayberry. It was merely how the refusal should be
couched--in what terms. Don’t you remember?”

“I admit you seem to have a clearer remembrance of the circumstances
than I,” said Mayberry. “But it looks to me as though Frank had changed
his mind about it without referring to the matter again to either of
us. He probably found out that his fears regarding the Bogata Company’s
credit were unfounded. Otherwise how would I have found the order on
file? We have got to get right to work on it, too. That is why I am
ordering these particular supplies.”

“But, Mr. Mayberry!” she gasped, “I am quite sure a mistake has been
made. Mr. Barton never intended this order to be filled.”

“How do you know?”

“The letter I wrote----”

“Pooh! I suppose Frank was trying you out--seeing what you could do in
an emergency,” and the superintendent laughed. “He never sent your
letter. The Bogata people are old customers. It would not do to offend
them.”

“That is just it, Mr. Mayberry,” she cried. “It was a serious matter. I
feel sure--Why! I put the letter in the mail myself.”

Mayberry sat up straighter in his chair and his gaze became more
intent. He dropped the butt of his cigarette in the ash tray that was
never on the desk when the general manager was there.

“You mean to tell me,” he asked, “that you posted that letter after
Barton signed it?”

“No. It was after John made his last trip to the post-office. When Mr.
Barton had signed the letter I sealed it in the envelope, affixed the
stamp, and placed it in the letter basket on my desk with other late
mail.”

“Humph! Did those letters go out that evening?” Mayberry asked.

“No. John always takes them when he goes to early post--before I arrive
at my desk.”

“Then Frank could have regained the letter without your knowing it.”

“But, Mr. Mayberry! surely he would have said something.”

“Are you sure? He was not in the habit of taking you--or even me--into
his confidence in most matters, was he?” and Mayberry looked at the
girl keenly. “Where’s the carbon copy of that letter?”

“I’ll get it,” she said, turning swiftly to the door.

“And I say, Ethel!” he said. “Bring the Bogata Company’s letter as
well, will you?”

She resented his familiar way of speaking; but never had she been able
to break Jim Mayberry of calling her by her given name. And he had,
after all, known her when she was still a child. She was gone some
minutes from the private office--long enough for Mayberry to smoke
a second cigarette. She appeared with the proper drawer of the file
cabinet and her countenance had fallen. She had run hastily through the
Bogata correspondence. Here was the letter which had accompanied the
order from the Bogata Company. The copy of the answer she had written
at Frank Barton’s behest, and which he had approved, was not to be
found.

“I do not understand it, Mr. Mayberry,” the girl declared in a worried
tone.

“Pshaw! easily enough understood,” the superintendent rejoined. “He
probably conferred with somebody who knew the Bogata people are as safe
as a stone church. So he withdrew the letter from your mail basket
after you went home.”

“Oh, Mr. Mayberry!”

“Sure.” Mayberry laughed. “You’ve stirred up a mare’s nest. Don’t
worry.”

“But I can’t accept your assertion as at all plausible,” the girl
said earnestly. “He surely would have spoken to me about it. The next
day----”

“His mind was full of army stuff. He did not know half the time what he
was doing here for a week before he went.”

Ethel knew that was not at all true. But she was not here to quarrel
with the superintendent. However, she said:

“I remember clearly that Mr. Barton did not remain here later than I
did that evening, Mr. Mayberry. I saw him on the street after I left
the factory by the side gate.”

“Huh!” Mayberry’s cheeks suddenly burned again and his eyes glittered
as he gazed loweringly upon her. “You seem to remember mighty well what
happened. I remember that evening, too, come to think of it. I was
waiting out in front for you in my car. You stood me up.”

Scorn leaped suddenly into the girl’s eyes. “I do not understand you,
Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly.

“Oh! you don’t, hey?”

“We are not discussing personalities,” she said, dropping her gaze and
ignoring his ugly look. “This is business. I fear there has been a
serious mistake made.”

“Nothing of the kind, that _I_ can see,” Mayberry rejoined. “Barton
changed his mind. Why should you bother _your_ head about it further?”

His sneer bit like acid in a fresh wound; but Ethel checked her temper.

“I do not mean to interfere in the slightest with your work, Mr.
Mayberry. Mr. Barton brought me into the affair himself. I feel that
all is not right. Let us communicate with Mr. Barton before this order
for stock is sent. It may save the Hapwood-Diller Company several
thousand dollars.”

“It won’t save us a cent.”

“But--”

“I’ve got it all figured out. You see, I’ve had this on my mind a long
time.”

“Yes, that may be true, still--”

“It won’t save us a cent, Ethel,” the superintendent drawled again,
having recovered his own temper. “This Bogata order’s got to be filled.
It will do no good to delay the purchase of supplies. It’s Friday now.
If we wrote to-night we could not expect an answer before Tuesday or
Wednesday from Barton. And I can point out to you why even he cannot
change matters now.”

“Why?” she demanded sharply.

He picked up the letter which had accompanied the schedule of the order
from the Bogata Company of Norville. If he smiled Ethel did not see it,
for she was eagerly scanning the paragraph to which Mayberry’s finger
pointed:

  “Prices and terms as agreed upon in our last two orders. If we hear
  nothing to the contrary within ten days shall consider the order and
  terms accepted and will look for delivery of first quota of goods
  within ninety days.”

“Actually,” drawled Mayberry, “this order was accepted by us more than
a month ago. It was evident that Barton did not send the letter you
wrote, and removed the copy of it from the file. The schedule came to
me in the usual way. There is nothing more to be said about it, Ethel.
I believe that Frank himself said something about The Hapwood-Diller
Company never reneging on a job. It would be a bad precedent to do so
when he is absent from his post.”

He said it so that the girl actually winced. To think of Jim Mayberry
pointing out to her the ethics of the matter!

“The fact is,” he pursued, coolly, “I have got to get a hustle on to
make the first delivery within the specified time. I have already
arranged to increase the output of Shop Number Two in order to do this.
We shall run four or five hours overtime five days a week, beginning
Monday. We’re crowded with work as it is; and this Bogata order is a
big one.”

Ethel listened to him in silence. She realized that it was useless to
say anything more. Her heart pounded in her ears, but her countenance
remained pale. She felt the approach of disaster when she turned away
from his desk with the letter file-drawer in her arms.

“Don’t trouble your head about it, Ethel,” he called after her. “You
take everything too blamed seriously--just as I told you before. It
won’t get you anywhere----”

But she had closed the door between them. Had she turned to answer she
realized very clearly that she would have said something for which she
might be sorry afterward.




CHAPTER IX

THE DUTY DEVOLVES


Ethel Clayton felt the assurance of wrongdoing on the part of the
superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller Company. Yet she could not tell
why nor how.

That the concern had been drawn into the Bogata affair by some trick
was without question. Mayberry’s look and words alone would have proved
that to her satisfaction.

She had a clear and particular remembrance of the circumstances
surrounding the receipt of the order from the Norville company,
Barton’s decision to refuse to fill it, his reason for so doing, and
all. The way in which she had shown the general manager how to refuse
the order without giving offence could not easily be forgotten.

Mr. Barton had said that the running of the factory on double time, or
crowding the shops with extra workmen, meant a distinct loss of profit
rather than a gain for the Hapwood-Diller Company. The factory was not
arranged for such increase of output. More than one concern has been
ruined by such false prosperity.

Here Mayberry was planning to put into execution exactly the plan
vetoed by the absent general manager’s good sense. Yet, knowing how the
contracts for their product stood, Ethel believed that such increase in
working hours would be necessary if the Bogata order was to be filled
on time.

There was a catch there. She felt it. She was convinced that the
superintendent had more knowledge of the subject than he was willing to
admit.

It all puzzled the girl. Why should Jim Mayberry be so determined to
balk Mr. Barton’s will? And in this particular instance?

As far as she had been able to see the superintendent had done nothing
in his conduct of the factory’s affairs which would have either
displeased Barton or was contrary to the latter’s methods. Why was the
superintendent so determined to favor the Bogata Company?

She remembered clearly that the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company was positive of the irresponsibility of the Bogata people.
There was no gainsaying that. She was positive he had not changed his
mind, involving the destruction of the letter she had written and
Barton had signed, the removal of the carbon copy from the files, and
the filing of the schedule of the Bogata Company’s order.

No! she would not believe Frank Barton had done all that and said
nothing about it to either Mayberry or herself. Yet, if the manager
had not done it, _who had_?

Who would be benefited by such a favor to the Bogata people? It might
be actually disastrous to the Hapwood-Diller Company--and that thought
frightened Ethel.

She did not know what to do. That is, what to do to halt the line of
conduct Mayberry had plainly determined to follow. She figured up
the schedule for factory stock again. Between four and five thousand
dollars for special grade raw material, useless except to the Bogata
people, was included in it.

Knowing well how carefully Barton had watched the outlay for stock
for months--how narrow the line was between profit and loss in every
department indeed--Ethel quite realized that this single purchase would
make a very bad showing upon the books of the Hapwood-Diller Company,
unless the Bogata order was finished and was paid for.

If that contract was filled and was not paid for, a ruinous deficit
in supplies and labor cost would face the factory at the end of the
fiscal year. And in addition the general manager had assured her he
figured overtime work or an increase of help in the shops as positively
detrimental.

This order for stock and factory supplies was supposed to go out at
once. It was nearly time for John Murphy to make his last trip for the
day to the post-office. There was absolutely nothing to hold the order
back, and Mayberry, she knew, would take offence if the matter was
retarded.

It was true that five days must be wasted if Mr. Barton was communicated
with by mail. And that joker in the Bogata Company’s letter seemed to
be a barrier to any attempt to get out of fulfilling the contract at
this late day. Would it do any good to disturb Barton about the matter
at all now?

If she could only see him! If she could discuss the point with
him--tell him of her suspicions and fears. At least, some of her
suspicions. Ethel scarcely admitted to herself that she positively
identified the person guilty of juggling the letters and the Bogata
order sheets. Merely she felt certain that Frank Barton knew nothing
about it.

He should know. He must know before more harm was done.

The order for supplies was before her. She reached across the desk for
the envelope in which to enclose it and her stiff linen cuff caught in
the filigree work of the inkstand the office staff had presented to her.

It tottered. In another moment the catastrophe had occurred--a deluge
of blue fluid rolled across the desk and the papers on it.

Ethel sprang up to escape the drip from the top of the desk.

“Man overboard!” ejaculated Benway Chase, starting for the lavatory for
a towel with which to mop up the ink.

Little Skinner held the blotted order sheets gingerly by their corners,
to drip over Ethel’s wastebasket.

“Gee!” she said, hoarsely, “all them papers!”

“Those papers, Mabel,” admonished Ethel involuntarily.

For Mabel Skinner was like an actor afflicted with stammering in his
natural character; when once in his part and on the stage he never
stutters. So Mabel, nimble of wit, who was studying stenography at
a night school, hoping to work up to a better position with the
Hapwood-Diller Company, could take the small amount of dictation that
fell to her reasonably well and could transcribe it into fair English:
but she usually talked like a street gamin.

“They will have to be recopied, Mabel,” Ethel said quietly. “Josephine
has her hands full; will you do it for me?”

“Sure,” agreed Miss Skinner, shifting her gum. Then she cocked an
apprehensive eye at the clock. “I--I got a date to-night, Miss Clayton;
but I can go without supper----”

“I don’t wish you to finish it to-night, Mabel. Let me have it
completed sometime to-morrow forenoon.”

“I’m on,” said the girl, and bore away the streaked and blotted papers
to her machine.

John was called in to clean up the muss, and after a while Ethel could
resume her seat. Nothing of importance upon her desk had been spoiled
by the ink but the supply order sheets, and fortunately Jim Mayberry
did not come out of the private office until it was all over. It was
Ethel’s business to see that the order was promptly sent. It was her
fault that it was delayed.

Never before in her business experience had Ethel Clayton deliberately
done such a thing. She was acting upon her own initiative and in a way
that scarcely measured up to her ethical standards. Yet how should she
meet guile save with guile?

On the way home that evening Benway was bewailing the fact that Mr.
Barton was not in the office so that he could see how well he, Benway,
was fitting into the routine of the office.

“Even Mr. Mayberry admits I can do the work all right,” the boy said
hopefully. “He said as much yesterday. But I don’t like the fellow,
Ethel. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

“‘A cat may look at a king’, Bennie,” she said lightly.

“But no dog like him should look at a queen, Ethel,” Benway Chase
retorted with a smile and a little sigh. “They are all tarred with the
same brush, Ethel. Every man that comes into the offices wants to hang
over your desk and palaver.”

“Hush, Ben! How you talk!” she exclaimed, a little flushed and annoyed.
“I declare I’ll have you sent out into the shipping room to work if you
watch me like that.”

“Pooh!” he laughed. “Is the honey at fault because the bees buzz around
it?”

“How poetical!” she scoffed. Yet she was secretly displeased. She did
not like to think that the men she met in business hours gave her more
attention than matters relating to business called for. The one man
whose admiration she would have been glad to secure had never, while he
was with them, shown any particular interest in her.

Ethel was too introspective for her own comfort.

She wondered all the evening if the thought that was budding in her
mind was germinated by her desire to see Frank Barton. Was it for
business reasons that she determined on her course? Or did she have
another and more personal desire to speak with the general manager of
the Hapwood-Diller Company, face to face?

However, she considered that the duty had devolved upon her to take
a drastic course. The order for new stock for the factory could be
delayed only forty-eight hours through the accident to the first draft
of the schedule. Instead of its reaching its destination on Saturday,
Ethel saw to it that it was not mailed until after noon on Saturday.
Therefore it would not be received by the dealer to whom it was
assigned until Monday. Meantime----

She astonished her mother on Saturday evening by announcing that she
proposed to go to Quehasset on the early train Sunday morning. By
this time the railroad was running excursion trains to the officers’
training camp on Saturdays and Sundays. Quehasset was becoming a
popular week-end resort.

“Not alone!” gasped Mrs. Clayton. “Never!”

“I’d like to know why not?” her daughter asked, rather tartly. “I’ve
been to Boston alone, and that’s farther.”

“But it won’t look right--all those men, Ethel. You know some of them,
too. There’s Mr. Barton!”

“I expect to see him,” declared the girl composedly.

“It--it doesn’t look right,” objected her mother more faintly.

“I’d like to know why not? I should hope I was old enough to go about
without a chaperon, or----”

“Let Benway go with you,” urged Mrs. Clayton, hurriedly.

But that was exactly what Ethel did not wish to do. Indeed, if
possible, she should have liked to keep the knowledge of her trip to
Quehasset from her mother. She hurried away early in the morning,
before most of the folk at that end of Burnaby Street were astir, and
boarded the train which stopped but a minute at the Mailsburg Station
at eight o’clock.

She noted, as she passed along the High Street to the station, that
more than the usual number of automobiles were abroad and most of
them headed for the Creek Road which was the first lap of the driving
highway to the training camp.

The Fuller car was one of these she saw. Helen was driving and her
mother and father sat in the tonneau. Her cousins gave Ethel Clayton
not the slightest notice, but she could not help being somewhat
disturbed by the thought that they were likewise bound for the training
camp and that they would see her there with Frank Barton. At any rate,
she hoped to arrive at the army camp first.




CHAPTER X

LOVE AND BUSINESS


Frank Barton had been thinking but little of love and not much about
business. His entire time from the bugle-blown:

  “I can’t get ’em up!
  I can’t get ’em up!
  I can’t get ’em up in the mor-r-rning!”

to tattoo at night was filled with thoughts military. In addition to
the regular course in tactics, he was studying special branches, such
as the science of gunfire, range finding, signaling, and the like, for
he wished to be assigned to the Field Artillery branch of the service.

His former experience in the Guard was of vast assistance to him,
yet he found that even the brief campaign on the Mexican Border had
greatly changed the drill and the training of both officers and men.
New methods were being adopted all the time. He soon realized that a
military formula based upon the experience gained by our War Department
in the Civil War, and upon which basis the National Guard had been
drilled in the past, was almost as old-fashioned as the rules for
conducting a Field of Honor in the time of the Crusaders.

The Great War has flung into the discard most established measures of
warfare. Fancy, so many years after the tilting with spears, a fighting
man wearing an iron pot on his head!

Barton had little time for the social life of the camp nor interest in
it. He was only interested in those men about him who were as sturdily
in earnest as himself in learning and getting ahead. Some were getting
into “this army thing,” as they called it, as a profession; some out
of pure patriotism, even if they did not talk about it. In either case
those who were not thoroughly in earnest did not last long.

He was mildly surprised when Morry Copley and his friend Bradley
arrived in camp--the former arrayed in a uniform cut by a fashionable
tailor, Bradley slouching behind in his heavy way, and with a scowl.
Why either of these fellows had come it was hard for Barton to
understand.

Reports from the factory encouraged Barton to believe that he might
safely continue his training. Mayberry had driven over in his car once
to see him and they had talked things over. Business seemed running
on well-oiled gears. There had been nothing in Ethel Clayton’s brief
letters to make him apprehensive. The factory and its affairs seemed
far afield from him.

The camp interests were so manifold that when even a short furlough
was due him Barton did not go home to Mailsburg. Instead he went to
New York to confer with certain high officers of the Department of
the East who he felt sure would bear him in mind if chance arose for
an early assignment to the Front. If business matters remained as
they seemed to be, he was determined to get “over there” as soon as
possible. Pershing’s hundred thousand were on the scene; the engineers
had marched through London and had arrived in France; now it was the
Rainbow Division that was talked of as being almost ready to sail, and
Frank Barton was eager to be assigned to duty with them.

“Rest your mind easy, Barton,” Grandon Fuller assured him the first
time he came over to Camp Quehasset with his daughter. “We stockholders
appreciate all that you have done; the Board is more than pleased with
your work. But you have trained a good assistant in Mayberry. He’ll do
very well.”

“I believe he will,” Frank Barton said heartily. He would rather,
however, have had a reassuring word from Macon Hammerly upon this
point. But Hammerly neither wrote to him nor came near the camp.

Helen was full of her own plans, although she did not forget to show
some interest in Barton’s affairs. She had become an active member of
the Red Cross forces. Being amply able to pay her own expenses, and
with health and freedom, she had the more easily secured permission to
join the very next quota of Red Cross workers sailing from “an Atlantic
seaport”--that in about six weeks. Her mother was to go with her and
establish herself in Paris.

“Really,” Barton thought, “it is brave of Helen, and wonderfully
unselfish as well.” That the girl made a display of everything she did
was not seen by his blinded eyes.

Barton was expecting the Fullers over again in their car on this
Sunday, and had accordingly polished his accoutrements and made his
quarters presentable. He shared these last with three other men; but
they were all off for the day, and he himself was duty-free until taps.

So he was not at all surprised when he heard the rustle of crisp skirts
and a light tapping on his open door. Before he could reply to the
summons he heard Morry Copley’s high voice advising:

“He must be there, Miss--ah--Really, I’m suah he’s not gone out of the
street this morning. I’ll look around for him if I may?”

“Thank you,” said a very cool voice. Morry was evidently not being
encouraged. And it was not Helen Fuller who spoke.

“Miss Clayton!”

Barton appeared with hand outstretched and a real welcome in his eyes.
But Copley was not to be easily ignored.

“I say, Barton,” he drawled, “I showed her over here from the camp
entrance, knowing you were at home, don’t you know.”

“Thanks, old fellow,” Barton said. “This is Miss Clayton’s first visit
to the camp.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Copley agreed, boldly eyeing the girl and showing
no desire to relieve them of his presence. One of Barton’s Western
brother-rookies would have accused the young exquisite of “horning in.”
“I’m suah if I’d ever seen--er--the lady here before I should have
remembered her.”

Ethel was plainly ruffled; but Frank Barton burst into hearty laughter.
He considered Morry quite harmless.

“Miss Clayton, I am sure, will allow me to introduce you, Copley,” he
said cordially, and then smiled at Ethel. “Mr. Copley comes from our
town, Miss Clayton.”

“Bah Jove! I saw you before in a tea room once,” Morry burst out. “Suah
I did! I was with Miss Fuller, you know. I wonder I did not recognize
you before. You weren’t dressed the same, you know.”

“If it was on a working day I am sure she was not dressed the same,”
Barton said, looking frankly his approval of Ethel’s Sunday appearance.

And yet, as she stood bandying light conversation with the two men,
Ethel Clayton was secretly hurt. Would Frank Barton have so casually
introduced Helen Fuller, for instance, to any companion-in-arms who had
forced himself upon them as Morry Copley had? The thought stung her
pride.

Really Copley seemed more than a little interested in her. He rattled
on boldly, and there was not a chance for her to divert his attention
that she might speak seriously and personally to the man she had come
to see.

The latter was unfeignedly glad to see her; but he seemed to consider
her visit merely a social one. And that did not altogether please Ethel
Clayton. She had come strictly on business. At least, so she had been
assuring herself. Yet all Barton seemed to care about the factory and
its affairs was expressed in a perfunctory:

“Everything going on all right at the works, Miss Clayton? Though of
course that is a superfluous question with such capable people as you
and Mayberry on the job. I knew it would be that way.”

“Really, Mr. Barton, you must not assume too much,” she hesitated,
unable to approach clearly before Morry Copley the matter that so
troubled her and that had brought her to Quehasset.

“I say,” drawled the latter, “you don’t mean to say Miss Clayton is one
of these really industrious people--like yourself, Barton? Is she, too,
a prop and support of the Hapwood-Diller Company?”

“She most certainly is!” smiled the general manager. “But I believe she
brings me nothing but good news. How about it, Miss Clayton?”

It was her chance--perhaps the best one she would have to get him away
from this chattering, inconsequential Morry Copley. “I have one puzzle
to consult you about, Mr. Barton,” she began, when, with a whir and
clash of released gears, a big touring car whirled around the corner
and halted almost directly before the shack.

“Oh, Jimminy Christmas, see who’s here!” ejaculated Copley.

“Miss Fuller! Welcome to our city!” joined in Barton, and hastily
descended to the car.

Morry Copley remained lounging beside Ethel, greeting the girl in the
car with merely the semaphore sign of good comradeship. Helen was
alone, having dropped her mother and father at the Staff Headquarters.
As had been said, Grandon Fuller had once borne the title of “Colonel”
and played the fact now for all it was worth.

“Don’t let me keep you, Mr. Copley,” Ethel said significantly.

“No chance!” drawled Morry. “Miss Fuller has no use for me when
Barton’s around. They talk nothing but war and nursing. Gee! I hate to
think of folks getting all mussed up so.”

“Why, for pity’s sake, did you ever join this camp?” Ethel asked, in
astonishment.

“I rawther fancied myself in the uniform, don’t you know,” he declared,
but with twinkling eyes. “I say!” he added, “they’re not going for a
spin without us?”

Ethel leaped to her feet and anger flashed from her eyes, although
Morry did not see it. Miss Fuller was evidently trying to urge Barton
to get into the car. She had punched her starter button and the car
began to throb.

But Barton turned back to the two on the plank porch of the shack. “Do
come, Miss Clayton,” he urged. “I promised I would take luncheon with
Miss Fuller to-day at the Mannerly Arms, and she has not much time. It
will be quite all right, I am sure. If you have something to say to
me----”

“My errand is strictly business, Mr. Barton,” Ethel replied shortly.

“I am sure Miss Fuller will wait----”

“Oh, bring her along, _do_!” exclaimed Helen from the car and with
impatience. “Come on, Morry. I know _you_ are dying to take her. You’ll
excuse me for not getting out and begging you myself, Miss Clayton,”
she added carelessly. “I suppose it is sometimes necessary to mix
business with pleasure. If you really _have_ to consult Mr. Barton----”

“I will not detain him long, Miss Fuller,” Ethel said, pale but firm.
“I have neither time nor inclination to go to lunch with you--and Mr.
Copley. She dismissed the latter with a curt nod, and he strolled down
to the car, grumbling, while Barton, a little vexed, took his place
beside the girl who he acknowledged was so capable an assistant in the
factory office.

“I am sorry to interfere in any way with your affairs, Mr. Barton,”
Ethel hastened to say. “Had I not believed the occasion serious----”

“Serious for me?” he asked quickly, eyeing her curiously.

“Serious to the Hapwood-Diller Company,” she replied stiffly. “Of
course I have a double interest in the welfare of the company. My
mother’s income depends upon its profits.”

“I know that your mother holds some of our stock,” he said patiently.

“Therefore my particular interest may perhaps be excused.” Ethel could
not help saying this, if it was a mite catty. She could not feel in any
angelic mood at the moment. “In addition, Mr. Barton, you asked me to
keep a watchful eye on things in the office.”

“I did,” he said with gentleness.

She flushed more deeply. It was plain that he was quite aware she had
been hurt by Miss Fuller’s manner; and that but increased Ethel’s
vexation. As though it really mattered what Helen Fuller did or said!

He noted the flush and looked disturbed.

“Are you not feeling well?” he asked kindly.

“Oh, yes, I am perfectly well,” she returned quickly.

“You look as if you might have a headache, or something like that.”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did have,” she replied, not knowing what else
to say.

“Oh, yes, it would. I don’t want you to work if you are not well.”

“Here is the situation,” and she rushed on to state the matter of the
Bogata order with her usual brisk explicitness.

Barton now gave close attention, and his changing expression betrayed
the value he put upon her story. At its conclusion he demanded:

“But what’s the matter with Jim? He must know that we all agreed those
people were not to be trusted.”

“He did not agree to that, it is evident,” Ethel said dryly. “In fact,
his remembrance seems to be hazy regarding the whole matter. Seems to
think you would have spoken to him about it again had you not intended
to accept the order.”

Barton made an impatient gesture. “That’s Jim all over. Stubborn as a
mule!” he exclaimed. “And yet that very stubbornness makes him of value
in many circumstances.”

It was plain he had no real suspicion of Mayberry. And Ethel was
determined not to put forward just at that time her own belief in the
superintendent’s treachery.

“And what have you done about the matter before coming to me?” Barton
asked with a curiosity that Ethel thought she understood. He was not
at all sure whether she had the initiative to balk this thing which she
believed was all wrong.

“Something wholly feminine, I fear,” she replied, and told him of the
accident to the order addressed to the factory supply people.

Barton laughed shortly. Evidently he was not displeased.

“I can see you have a very good reason for not quarreling with
Mayberry. Quite right. Things would by no means go so smoothly if you
two could not work together. You retarded the order so that you could
see me to-day?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you expect me to do?”

“If that Bogata order is not to be filled, you can telegraph the stock
people to hold our order for correction.”

“Right! You certainly have a grasp of the situation, as you always
have, Miss Clayton,” he said promptly. “I will dictate that telegram.
You can send it from the railroad station as you go back, if you will.”

“Yes, Mr. Barton,” she responded, whipping out her book and pencil.

He smiled covertly. She was all business now.

“Your suspicions are quite correct,” Barton observed. “Somebody
tampered with that letter and order. I did not see the letter or the
carbon copy of it after signing the former. The Bogata people must
have a friend in our offices. Have you any idea----”

“No!” she exclaimed almost harshly.

If Barton could not see Jim Mayberry’s hand in the affair surely it was
not her place to tell him. He seemed to ignore utterly the possibility
of the superintendent’s being the person guilty.

“The Bogata people cannot hold us to any such terms,” Barton went on to
say. “We did not accept the order. Business--especially as important a
matter as this--is not so easily done. Their letter was a good deal of
a bluff as it stood. I should have felt justified in throwing it and
the schedule of their order into my wastebasket. Jim Mayberry is green
yet. I’ll have you take word to him----”

“Oh, Mr. Barton! if you do that you will make my position terribly
difficult,” she cried.

“True,” he admitted. “I suppose that is so. I will communicate with
Hammerly. He knows all about the affairs of the Bogata people. We will
let him break the news to Jim,” and he laughed a little.

“You see, Miss Clayton, we must expect such mistakes as this to creep
in when a fellow is like Jim. He has all the knowledge of the business
that is necessary, I am sure. But he is likely to make mistakes--at
first.”

She looked at the manager in wonder. Was it possible that his old-time
interest in Jim Mayberry, and the fact that they had been friends for
so long, utterly blinded Barton to the superintendent’s faults?

“You have a quicker mind than Jim,” went on Barton, easily, “and you
haven’t his stubbornness. I really would not dare accept my lieutenancy
and ask for active duty if Jim had not you at his elbow. I know you
will not let him make any serious error.”

“But, Mr. Barton!” she cried, under her breath, “you do not expect
really to leave the country so quickly?”

“Perhaps. I have offered my services. I have got my commission. Really,
my work here has been somewhat like a review of former studies. And
officers are needed----”

“Not _over there_?” Ethel gasped.

He did not chance to see her face as he replied quietly: “So we expect.
We are not supposed to talk of it. Certain movements of the War
Department are kept secret. But whatever happens to me I am confident
you and Jim will conduct the affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company
successfully. Why, this proves it! What he overlooks you will not miss.
Now, will you take a letter to Mr. Hammerly?”

She held her pencil poised in readiness and nodded. Surely at that
moment she could not have uttered a word. He began to dictate, and
the letter was couched in such terms as to show his belief that Jim
Mayberry was perfectly innocent of all guile in the matter. However,
when it was concluded, Barton said reflectively:

“But there is a traitor in the offices, Miss Clayton. That we know it
must put you and Mayberry both on guard. I depend on you particularly
to watch for the guilty party.”

“And suppose I find him?” she demanded quickly.

“If you cannot reach me,” Barton gravely told her, “then--then go to
Mr. Hammerly. Cross-grained as he is, he is perfectly honest. Besides,”
he added, “next to Mr. Grandon Fuller, he owns more stock in the
Hapwood-Diller Company than anybody else.”




CHAPTER XI

WAR IS DECLARED


“For pity’s sake, Mr. Barton, _do_ come away,” Helen Fuller cried at
last. “We’ll _never_ have time for luncheon.”

“Beg pardon. Business must be attended to before we can take our
pleasure, always,” and Frank Barton laughed.

But Ethel’s countenance was quite composed again. She did not even
glance in Miss Fuller’s direction as she closed the notebook and put it
and the pencil into her bag.

“Good-day, Miss Clayton,” Barton said, taking her hand. “I will not
thank you for coming to me on this business, for I know your deep
interest in the company’s affairs. That was merely your duty. But to
see you again has been a pleasure. Even should I be assigned to foreign
duty suddenly, I shall hope to see all my Mailsburg friends at least
once before I sail. I send my regards to everybody in the office.”

It was like that. He did not consider her call a personal one. Yet
that was not altogether Frank Barton’s fault, for Ethel had made it
plain that she had come only on business. The young manager of the
Hapwood-Diller Company was no more dense than any other man.

Helen’s voice, with a tartness in it that could not be mistaken,
reached them again:

“_Do_ hurry, Mr. Barton! I presume if you were fighting in the trenches
it would all have to stop while you gave your attention to some factory
matter.”

He laughed and ran down the steps to the car. The engine of the latter
began to roar again.

“Coming, Morry?” Helen asked, as the wheels began to revolve.

“Two’s company, three’s a gang,” he drawled, waving his hand.
“Farewell. I am going to show Miss Clayton around the camp.”

This he insisted on doing. After the brusk departure of Barton in the
car Ethel was too proud to show any chagrin. Besides, Morry Copley was
evidently desirous of pleasing her. She noted that he had assumed quite
a military carriage and concluded that his few weeks in camp had done
him a world of good.

“Won’t you let me call on you when I come back to Mailsburg on
furlough, Miss Clayton?” he asked, when he had showed her everything of
general interest in the camp.

“Most certainly not!” Ethel exclaimed bluntly. “You know very well Mrs.
Copley would be horrified if you visited a working girl, Mr. Copley.”

“Aw, fiddle!” returned Morry in disgust, “I’m not half as much tied to
her apron strings as you think.”

“Perhaps you should be,” Ethel laughed. “What will she say if you
really are ordered to France?”

“Mothaw really thinks this is all play. She has no idea we’ll really
go. At least, not such fellows as Bradley and me.”

“And--will you?” Ethel wickedly observed.

“If I get my commission I’ll be off before she knows it--poor dear
lady,” he declared. “Don’t you people in Mailsburg fret. There are some
men in this camp besides Frank Barton.”

Ethel sent the telegram holding up the stock order as instructed by
Barton, and when she arrived home late in the afternoon she transcribed
her notes of the letter to Mr. Macon Hammerly and sent it to that
gentleman by special messenger. The latter appeared in the offices of
the Hapwood-Diller Company early on Monday morning. For once he seemed
to wish to catch Jim Mayberry at his desk.

“Let’s see,” scowled Macon Hammerly, eyeing the superintendent blackly,
“have you managed to find a hat in town big enough for you, Jim?”

“I have ’em made to order--and stretchable,” grinned the younger man,
never at a loss for an answer when he met Hammerly, whom he just as
cordially disliked as Hammerly disliked him. “What’s biting you now?”

“A suspicion that you have a swelled head is eating on me,” frankly
announced the old grain dealer, his bushy eyebrows meeting again. “I’ve
come to give you a mite of advice.”

“Thanks!” returned Mayberry, encouragingly. “I’ve been expecting this
visit ever since Frank went away. It must have pained you to keep away
so long.”

“Not exactly,” returned Hammerly. “It’s only surprised me that I
haven’t had to come around before. I told Barton I’d keep an eye on
you.”

“Thanks again,” growled Mayberry, and this time he did not look so
pleasant. Hammerly was quite unmoved.

“Here’s the trouble,” he said, quietly watching the superintendent.
“Barton wrote me to look up the Bogata people again.”

The hit was palpable. Mayberry jumped in his chair. He lifted his face
to stare at the old man in open surprise.

“Seems there’s an order kicking around the office here from them.
Barton had his doubts about accepting it. Now there _is_ no doubt.
You’re not to do a stroke of work on those goods.”

“Who says so?” snapped Mayberry. “Who’s in charge here, I want to know,
Mr. Hammerly?”

“_You_ won’t be,” said the other softly, “if you don’t take well meant
advice.”

“Why! that order’s been accepted long ago. I’ve ordered some of the
stock. I’ve planned to begin the work this week.”

“Change your plans, Jim Mayberry. Change your plans,” said Hammerly
in a more threatening voice. “You’re not in power here. Barton may
come back any day and polish you off. And this Bogata business is
settled--for all time. Don’t make a mistake.”

“Why, we can’t----”

“You’re right. You can’t fill the order. Pull in your horns. The Bogata
Company are going to have a New Year’s present of a receivership.
And I’m hanged if I’ll stand by and see them try to bolster up their
rotten credit with the credit of the Hapwood-Diller Company. They don’t
happen to owe this firm anything, Jim; but they owe everybody else in
the world who would give ’em a cent’s worth of credit. You kill their
order.”

“I tell you it can’t be done,” muttered Mayberry.

“If you don’t Barton will come here and do it himself. He’s already
wired your supply people to hold that order you sent for correction.
You’re not going to run this factory into debt one penny’s worth to aid
the Bogata people.”

Mayberry sprang up, his heavy face aflame. “If you were a younger man,
Mr. Hammerly----”

“Forget my age, Jim. I’ve never seen the day yet that I couldn’t handle
a chap of your size and shape,” and he let his keen eye run over
Mayberry’s obese figure. “You’re as stubborn as a mule. Perhaps that’s
all the matter with you. But you’ve got your instructions. All you need
to do is to follow them. Write to the Bogata people and tell them this
factory can’t fill their order.”

“I don’t see by what right----”

“None at all. I’m butting in,” said Hammerly turning to the door. “But
you’d better think it over.” He went out chuckling, and after a while
Mayberry cooled down. He knew well enough Hammerly’s power on the
board. He soon grew calm enough to study the thing out.

Barton had called on Hammerly for advice again. How had Barton heard of
the Bogata matter? Just one answer to that question. Ethel Clayton!

Mayberry’s expression when he came to this conclusion boded ill for
Ethel. He knew just how he stood personally with her. Not that he
cared more for Ethel Clayton in the first place than he did for half a
dozen other girls. Only it had piqued him that she should have been so
disdainful of his advances.

Now he had a real reason, he told himself, for considering Ethel in the
light of an enemy. She had thwarted his intention of jamming the Bogata
order through the factory before Barton became aware of what he was
doing. The success of the scheme meant much in a financial way to the
superintendent.

Now he could not do it. It was true that he had got his orders from
the old grain merchant. Hammerly would surely keep his eye on him
hereafter--if he had not already been doing so.

Mayberry knew he had a friend in Grandon Fuller. But he did not know
yet just how much of a friend Mr. Fuller was. Nor why he was friendly
with him! Mr. Fuller had not yet shown his hand.

Fuller was the heaviest stockholder in the Hapwood-Diller Company and
was, of course, on the board of directors. But it was doubtful if he
could swing more votes than Macon Hammerly.

Angry as he was, Mayberry felt that it would be the part of wisdom to
keep from an open break with the grain dealer. Besides, Barton had not
gone to France yet--if he ever did.

A telegram came from the supply house:

  “We hold your order as requested subject to correction.”

Mayberry sent for Ethel.

“What do you know about this, Ethel?” he demanded, glowering at her as
she read the telegram.

“Just as much as you do, Mr. Mayberry,” she declared, composedly enough.

He thought that over a bit. Then he dictated a a letter to the
Bogata Company bluntly refusing to fill their order and without
even explaining or apologizing for the seeming delay in answering
their letter. He had managed to do exactly what Barton had tried to
avoid--giving the Bogata people offence. If the miracle happened, and
the Bogata people “came back,” they would never feel friendly again
toward the Hapwood-Diller Company.

As for Mayberry and Ethel, war was declared between them. There could
be no further doubt of it.




CHAPTER XII

THE IMAGE HE TOOK AWAY


Although Frank Barton was still manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company,
he had turned his salary back into the treasury of the concern ever
since joining the training camp at Lake Quehasset.

It was not long after the flurry regarding the Bogata Company
order that a suggestion was made in the directors meeting of the
Hapwood-Diller Company that Barton be removed and Mayberry be put in
his place as manager. The suggestion came from Grandon Fuller. Macon
Hammerly opposed it.

“I am told that Barton will sail shortly with a contingent of our brave
boys for the other side,” Mr. Fuller declared pompously. “I fancy he
has merely neglected to resign in the stress of other business. Mr.
Mayberry has shown his ability and capacity for management. I do not
see why Brother Hammerly should object.”

“Patriotic reasons,” said the opposing member of the board dryly. “I
object to kicking a fellow out of his job because he is going off to
fight his country’s battles. Let things rest as they are, Fuller.”

“Do you mean all through the war?” demanded Mr. Fuller, with some heat.

“Why not? Frank Barton pulled this company out of a slough of despond
that pretty near swamped us. If he comes back alive I, for one, want to
see him manager again.”

“But what about Mr. Mayberry?”

“How is _he_ hurt?” snorted the old grain merchant. “He’s sitting here,
tight enough, while another man is fighting in his place. The least he
can do is to hold Barton’s job for him.”

That killed the suggestion for the time being. The matter leaked out of
the board room, however, and Ethel Clayton heard of it. She wondered
if, after all, the Fullers were such good friends of Frank Barton as
they seemed to be.

Likewise she began to wonder what would happen to her if Jim Mayberry
ever got the full power over the office force that he had in the
factory. He might then discharge her on some easily trumped-up pretext.
The thought was not a pleasant one.

Of late, on several occasions Mayberry had criticized her work,
especially her management of the office staff. He aimed some shafts
of his rough wit, too, at Benway Chase, although he could find no
complaint to make in the new clerk’s work.

For Benway really showed a remarkable aptitude for his position. He was
always energetic. When a member of the shipping room force was away for
a while, Benway took on the duties of checker in addition to his usual
work, which latter he did not in the least neglect.

When Mayberry noticed this he said:

“So you are out to master the whole business, are you, Chase? Going to
be the wheelhorse, driver and spotted dog under the hind axle.”

“I told you, Mr. Mayberry, I was out for your job,” Benway said coolly.
“Every little bit a fellow learns puts him so much farther ahead.”

“Think so, do you?” sneered the superintendent.

But Ethel knew Benway was getting a firm grasp on the details of the
office work that made him exceedingly useful. He very quietly relieved
her of some of the duties which had a way of falling upon her shoulders.

Barton had been in the habit of depending on her bright mind and
willingness to a great degree. Mayberry deliberately shirked much of
the routine work as he could. And of course it all fell upon Ethel and
made her burden the heavier to bear. Sometimes she was held at her post
until long after the others were gone for the day.

Benway Chase would have remained to help or to accompany her home on
these occasions had she allowed him to, and she had fairly to drive
Little Skinner home. The latter would have done all Ethel’s work for
her had she been able.

“Take it from me!” the slangy Mabel declared. “That Jim Mayberry lets
you slave here while he’s playin’ poker down to the Bellevue or
runnin’ about the country in that flivver of his. I wish’t Mr. Barton
would come back. He wouldn’t see you abused. Miss Clayton--’deed he
wouldn’t!”

Ethel had not heard from Barton since her visit to the training camp,
although she wrote to him briefly each week as she had promised.
Nothing special had arisen in the daily affairs of the Hapwood-Diller
Company to cause her sufficient worry to bring it to Barton’s notice.
And with the little trials, of course, she had no intention of
troubling him.

Mailsburg’s first quota of drafted men marched past the factory one
day to the railway station. The streets were lined with silent people
for the most part. But the buildings were cheerful with bunting and
flags. It was Ethel who insisted that the factory front be decorated in
addition to the great silk flag which Barton had raised first with his
own hands and which John raised each morning and took in at night.

Mayberry grudgingly shut down the shops for an hour that the hands
might cheer more than a hundred of the drafted men who had left the
Hapwood-Diller Company to don the army khaki.

Service flags began to appear all over the town after that. Mrs.
Trevor, Barton’s former landlady, hung out one with a single star on
it, and Ethel was told that the grim old woman kept Barton’s chair at
the table for him and allowed nobody to sit in it.

Almost every day something happened to remind Ethel that the war was
coming closer and closer to her. Her mother was knitting for the Red
Cross. She did not say much about this work save to mention with a
sniff that she hoped she could turn out as good work as those snips of
girls she saw knitting in the cars and on the park benches.

“And I expect to see them take those awful looking knitting bags to
church with them one of these days,” was likewise Mrs. Clayton’s tart
comment.

One day Ethel saw Morry Copley in town. It was while she was out
to lunch and, without seeing her, he bustled past so importantly
that she could not escape the thought that there must be something
afoot--perhaps some assignment of troops or officers that affected
Frank Barton as well. Morry wore the insignia of a second-lieutenant.

She hurried back to the office with the expectation of seeing Barton.
Surely he would not come to town without looking in upon them! But the
afternoon dragged by without his appearance. She said nothing to her
office mates regarding her expectations.

Each time the door opened she started and looked up, expecting to see
him--tall and handsome in his khaki--enter the office. It made her
nervous. There were mistakes in her work that put her back so she had
to remain after hours again. When Benway wanted to help her she snapped
at him and sent that surprised young man home “with a flea in his ear.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Barton had been cooling his heels
in the Fullers’ reception hall. He had sent up his card to Helen and
the maid had come down to say that the young lady was very busy. Would
Monsieur wait?

Monsieur would--most assuredly he would! He had not seen or heard from
Miss Fuller since the Sunday on which both she and Ethel Clayton had
chanced to come to Camp Quehasset. And now, save for a conference with
Mr. Hammerly, he had sacrificed most of his time in Mailsburg to speak
confidentially to Grandon Fuller’s daughter.

He waited her pleasure with such patience as he could master. He had
come to think of Helen during most of his waking hours. At least if his
military duties and studies were to the fore, the thought of Helen was
ever present in the back of his mind.

She was going to France he knew; but he might never see her over there.
Just now he was feeling very keenly the fact that he was assigned
to the Front and that he might, within a very short period, be in
desperate danger of death.

A precious hour and more he waited. Occasionally he saw a soft-footed
serving man or a maid pass his lonely alcove. Nobody spoke to him.
Finally the noise of a car under the porte-cochère awoke hollow echoes.
Immediately the sound of voices came from above. Down the broad
staircase tripped Helen.

“Oh, mercy _me_, Mr. Barton! Are _you_ here? And waiting _all_ this
time? That stupid maid! I was so busy with my dressmaker that I could
not possibly come. And then--the maid never reminded me.”

She might have delivered him a physical blow in the face and he would
have felt or shown it no more keenly. She was gorgeous in frock and
hat, and she smiled upon him in her old alluring way. But his spirit
fell from its heights. A dressmaker had been of more importance! She
had depended upon her maid to remind her that he was waiting to see her!

“I hoped to see you for a few minutes, Miss Helen,” he said quietly. “I
am going away.”

“Of course! So am I!” she cried. “But I must be off now to the
Northup’s dinner. The car is waiting. It’s too late for me to refuse,
Mr. Barton. And there is a dance afterward that I positively _must_
look in at. Dear _me_! I’ll really be _glad_ to be over there and at
work in a hospital. This running around to dinners and dances and what
Morry Copley calls ‘tea-fights’, is just killing me.

“Can’t I see you in the morning, Frank?”

He wanted to tell her that in the morning he would already be at sea.
But that was forbidden.

“I am afraid not. I have to go back on the eight-ten.”

“Oh! Not so _soon_! Really?” There was much lacking in her tone--much
of warmth that he had expected. “Well, best of luck! Hope to see you
‘over there,’ you know. Bye-bye!”

She ran out to the car, turning to wave her hand as she got in. And
that after he had waited an hour! Had Macon Hammerly been right after
all? He had said:

“The Fullers only want you for what they can get out of you. Grandon
Fuller was never known yet to do anything without a purpose behind
it. Look how he hung about Israel Diller--was right on the spot when
the old chap died. You don’t suppose Diller made Grandon Fuller rich
because he _deserved_ riches, do you?”

His wasted hour caused Barton to miss the office force at the factory;
but he went that way to the station, hoping to see Mayberry at least.
His mastery of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s affairs seemed a long way
behind him now. Indeed when a man faces war the past grows small to
him in any case. It is what is going to happen to him that completely
obsesses his thought.

Barton thrust his head in at the office door, having opened it softly.
A single strong light was ablaze over Ethel Clayton’s desk. The
remainder of the room was in shadow.

The girl had evidently finished the task that had kept her so late, for
her desk was cleared up and she sat back in her chair, dreaming. Her
gaze was fixed on the door of the private office; but Frank Barton
could not see her face until he spoke.

“Nobody here but you, Miss Clayton? I am certainly glad to see you. All
the rest gone?”

She turned her face toward him slowly, appearing not to be startled at
all by his coming. “They are all gone, Mr. Barton,” she said quietly,
and reached up quickly to turn the shade of the electric lamp so that
the light no longer fell on her face.

“Mayberry gone, too?” he asked, coming in with his hand held out.

“He is out of town, I believe,” Ethel told him, her voice unshaken,
rising to meet him.

“I am sorry I missed them all,” Barton said, grasping her hand for a
moment warmly. “You will have to give them my regards and best wishes.”

“Will you not stay over night?”

“I fear that will be impossible. I am on my way to catch the eight-ten.”

“You are not going away _now_? Not for _good_?”

Barton laughed. “I hope to come back safely,” he said. “But this is
good-bye for some time, Miss Clayton----”

He caught her arm and steadied her as she swung against the desk. Her
eyes closed and he saw suddenly that she was very pale.

“Are you faint? You’re working too hard!” he cried. “Look here, Miss
Clayton, you must take better care of yourself. I shouldn’t feel half
so safe in going away if you were not right here on the job. You’ve
got to be good to yourself.”

“I--I was a little faint. It’s all right, Mr. Barton,” she murmured.
“Nothing serious, I assure you. I’m not one of the fainting kind, as
you know.”

“No indeed!” he cried admiringly. “I bank on you and your very good
sense, Miss Clayton. You are not like other girls. I did not know for
a moment but that my announcement startled you. I should have been
flattered!” and he laughed.

She was silent. He could not see her face well, for she kept it turned
from the lamp. Finally she said: “Naturally I am troubled that you
should be going--so far away. Oh, this war is terrible, Mr. Barton!”

“Yes. All wars have been terrible. The one that touches you nearest
seems the most terrible. But after all, Miss Clayton, it doesn’t matter
much how one dies as long as death is inevitable.”

“That is fatalism! Perhaps it is the right soldier spirit,” she
murmured. Then she turned to face him again and her countenance was
quietly radiant. “But why should we who stop at home add to your
burdens? We should send you away with a smile.”

“I wonder!” he exclaimed. “I wonder if we fellows ought not to go away
with a smile--to furnish those we leave behind with courage? Those we
leave behind must do our work. War is waste, you know, when all is said
and done. I leave you, Miss Clayton, to keep things straight here,”
and he smiled warmly again as his hand once more sought hers. “Write
to me,” and he told her how to address him through the War Department.
“Good-bye!”

He wheeled swiftly and marched to the door. His upright carriage and
squared shoulders made his back look almost strange to her. She stood
before the desk leaning against it, her hands clinging tightly to its
edge. Her knuckles were perfectly white from the pressure of her hands
upon the wood--that grasp which actually kept her from falling.

But her face showed none of her terror and weakness. He turned at the
door to smile and nod to her again. The image he took away in his mind
was of her perfectly composed, smiling face. And again it was the
memory of Ethel Clayton, not of Helen Fuller, that he carried away as
the Girl He Left Behind.




CHAPTER XIII

THE AWAKENING


Frank Barton had gone to the Front. He would be where there was battle,
murder, and sudden death! War had become a horrid, living reality to
Ethel Clayton.

She heard that Morrison Copley had been in town to bid his mother
good-bye and had gone away, too, bound for the transport. Likewise that
Charlie Bradley, that hulking fellow who had been so notorious about
town, supposedly had sailed at the same time Barton had gone to France.

Ethel had occasion to pass the Fuller house within the week. It was
shuttered and empty looking. The _Clarion_ had told, in a column and a
half, of the last reception tendered Helen Fuller and her mother before
their departure. Grandon Fuller was living at the Bellevue and seemed
rather relieved than otherwise, so people said, that his wife and
daughter had gone abroad.

But Ethel did not scoff now--she had never done so openly--at the idea
of flighty Helen Fuller settling down to Red Cross work. Secretly she
wished that she, too, were on the way to France. Suppose Frank Barton
should be wounded! Some woman would attend him in the hospital. It
might even fall to Helen’s lot. Had Ethel gone to France it might be
her fate to nurse Barton.

She felt a sudden and bitter distaste for her work in the offices
of the Hapwood-Diller Company. The drab business affairs of every
day disgusted her. Although she neglected nothing, Ethel had no
satisfaction in what she did.

The war filled more and more space in the daily papers. But there was
no news of the Rainbow Division, with which it was believed Barton and
the other young officers from Mailsburg had sailed. Everything was so
secretly done!

There was the story that sifted back from France to the families of
some of the soldiers of the unit from the West, who thought they were
bound for New York by train, but who found themselves alighting in New
Orleans and going aboard the troop ships there, to sail for southern
France by the way of Gibraltar.

The fact that the country was honeycombed by German and Austrian spies,
and by those whom the enemy’s money could buy, was becoming slowly a
settled conviction, even in Mailsburg. Those of German birth and name
would in time be ostracised. It could not be helped. It was in the
nature of things.

The man who in war time calls himself too broad-minded to hate the
enemy is often one who has not yet awakened to the seriousness of war.
The enemy-alien in our midst should tremble for his personal safety.
Otherwise he becomes a menace.

Just off Burnaby Street was a little shop where, ever since Ethel was
a child, had sat a little old German cobbling shoes. He was a marked
character in this part of the town where the residents were mostly of
the old, native American stock.

Somebody has said that the trade of tailor breeds socialists and
pessimists. So being a cobbler used to breed philosophers of a kindly
sort. Gessler had been wont to hand out bits of homely and comfortable
philosophy with his mended shoes.

The war had changed his attitude toward life, it seemed. Until the
United States had got into it he had talked eagerly with everybody who
would listen.

The Kaiser he hated, for he was a “Prussian, arrogant and brutal.”

“My father used always to say that there would be war if that
bloodhound came to the throne!” he frequently said. But he likewise was
proud of his race. “The whole world is fighting them and can’t beat
them already!” he cried.

Now that his adopted country was arraigned against the fatherland,
Gessler was very glum and silent. He did not have so much work as
before; but he sat all day on his cobbler’s bench, his hammer in his
hand, often staring out of the window with empty eyes.

On her way to work one morning Ethel carried a pair of shoes to be
mended. But when she reached the corner in sight of which the little
German’s shop stood, she hesitated. How could she approach Gessler and
speak to him with that pleasant familiarity that had been her custom.

She could think of him only now as an enemy. Every German was an
enemy! His countrymen in their terrible undersea craft might sink the
transport upon which Frank Barton had sailed. The war had come home
to Ethel Clayton! It was real to her at last, as it becomes real to
everybody who has a personal stake in it.

She took the shoes to another cobbler and went on her way to the office.

These days Ethel was almost vexed with Benway Chase because he
continued to be so enthusiastic about his work and interested in it. He
never seemed to flag in his tasks; and he might really be, as he had
laughingly said, fitting himself for Jim Mayberry’s position.

He spent most of his noon hour talking with the foremen of the
different shops. He learned much about the practical working of the
factory system; yet he never neglected his own particular tasks.

Mabel Skinner still considered Benway the most wonderful young man who
had ever crossed her path; but she worshiped from afar. She did not
dream of preening her poor plumage to attract his notice; yet when
he smiled at her in good comradeship Little Skinner was secretly in
ecstasies.

“Gee!” she confided to Boots, her errant brother, on one occasion,
“when Mr. Chase asked me did I like flowers, an’ give me some of them
late asters from his mother’s garden, I almost swallowed my gum!”

“Cracky!” scoffed Boots. “That poor fish? Why, he ain’t got but one
good wing!”

“An’ he can put over a spitter with that that _you_ can’t hit,
Smartie,” retorted his sister vigorously. “And he’s a gentleman, Mr.
Chase is!”

“Cracky!” repeated Boots. “Seems to me, if I was a girl I’d fall for a
feller that could gimme something besides a flower an’ a sweet smile.
Like that Jim Mayberry. He’s got a flivver and could take you ridin’.”

“He only took me once,” said Mabel complacently. “And I guess he must
have give you a ride in his buzz-cart, too, that time, or you wouldn’t
have give me that dream about Jim and Sam Blaisdell of Norville workin’
in cahoots against Mr. Barton.”

“Huh! That warn’t no dream,” grumbled Boots. “You think you’re allus
so smart, Mab Skinner. I heard ’em talkin’ all right ’bout how to do
Mr. Barton. And it had something to do with the Bogata works down to
Norville, just as I told you.”

“Well, that egg never hatched, then,” declared his dubious sister.

They might have suspected the incubation of another egg had she known
how often Jim Mayberry was in consultation with Mr. Grandon Fuller
these days at the Bellevue, although Mabel Skinner of course knew
little about the inside affairs of the Hapwood-Diller Company. It might
have aroused any person’s suspicions to mark the superintendent’s
intimacy with the largest stockholder of the concern.

Mr. Fuller had not again suggested the removal of Barton and the
appointment of Mayberry as manager. Indeed, with the former already out
of the country and in the Service, that change did not seem necessary
to the carrying to conclusion of any schemes Mr. Fuller might have.

Not that there was anything wrong showing on the surface of affairs.
The factory seemed to be running quite as usual. But as the end of the
business year approached Ethel could not fail to note that the reports
on output were not so favorable as they had been earlier in the year.
As, of course, it was not really within the compass of her work she
could not discover why this should be.

From the very day Mayberry had been balked in his endeavor to put
the Bogata order through, the tide of fortune for the Hapwood-Diller
Manufacturing Company seemed to have turned. The superintendent never
spoke again about the Bogata Company to Ethel. The latter knew,
however, that Hammerly’s prophecy regarding a receivership for that
concern had come true--and that before the new year.

In the matter of the shop reports the girl was puzzled and alarmed. It
did not seem to be anybody’s fault; certainly Mayberry did not neglect
his supervision of the factory, and most of the foremen were old and
faithful employees.

The report of the corporation compared unfavorably with the last
report. A good deal of money was tied up in raw material. Contracts
unfilled and bills not yet collectible were items that bulked big on
the wrong side of the ledger.

The board voted the usual dividend; but the surplus was much reduced
thereby. And then, suddenly and like the bursting of a bomb, trouble
came.

The Hapwood-Diller Company stock was listed in the market; that is, it
was traded in by the curb brokers both in State and Broad Streets. One
morning Hammerly came raging into the offices, his _Financial Gazette_
in his hand, his spectacles pushed up to the line of his grizzled hair,
and his eyes fairly snapping.

“What’s the meaning of this, I want to know?” he cried, shaking the
financial sheet under Jim Mayberry’s nose as that young man appeared
from the manager’s office. “Do you know anything about this?”

“About what, Mr. Hammerly?”

“This trading in Hapwood-Diller shares? It’s been going on for a
week, I understand. Yesterday three hundred shares was sold for
eighty-nine--eleven points off. Never heard of such a thing! Who’s
selling?”

“Why, bless your heart, Mr. Hammerly,” said the superintendent, “I
don’t know. I own only fifty shares and I haven’t sold them, I can
assure you.”

“Some tarnal fool is dumping his shares on the market, and at a bad
time. Right after such a poor showing as was made by our last report.
If Frank Barton was on the job such a report would never have been
made.”

Mayberry flushed. “No man can make bricks without straw, Mr. Hammerly,”
he said.

“Huh?” snorted the grain dealer. “Who ever told you they made bricks of
straw? That’s about all you know, Jim Mayberry. They make bricks with
clay around these parts. You ain’t in Egypt. But that ain’t neither
here nor there. This here selling of shares--and maybe these were only
wash sales?” added the suspicious old man. “Here! let me see the stock
book, Mayberry.”

“Ask Ethel for that,” returned the superintendent sharply, and, turning
on his heel, walked away.

Mr. Hammerly looked after him with lowering brow. “Ha!” he muttered,
“mighty independent of a sudden. Now, I wonder what that means?”

But he was as pleasant as usual with Ethel. Macon Hammerly approved of
her. He retired to a corner seat to study the list of names to whom
stock, at the reorganization after Israel’s Diller’s death, had been
issued. Most of the local owners of the shares had clung to all their
original allotment, even through the depression at the beginning of
the war before Frank Barton had been elevated to the management of the
concern’s affairs.

The Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company had always been a very close
corporation. There were some Diller and Hapwood heirs in the West and
South who had traded off their shares in the corporation; but nobody
knew better than Mr. Macon Hammerly just where those shares lay. At
least, up to this date he thought he knew where the bulk of them were.

The next shock to the working force of the Company, as well as to the
board, was the turning back of the entire order billed to the Kimberly
Binding Company. The order amounted to twelve thousand dollars. The
goods were not according to specifications.

Jim Mayberry denied all responsibility for this error. The Kimberly
order had been received and the contract signed by Barton. Mayberry
showed that the shop sheets covering the contract had been followed
exactly by the workmen. The duplicates of these papers in the office
were the same as the working plans in every particular.

But the Kimberly Company produced its copy of the specifications with
two differences in it, one of dimension and the other of quality,
changes which made the finished product absolutely useless to the
Kimberly people. Or for anybody else, for that matter! The product
could merely go into the scrap heap.

There was a live tilt in the board meeting that day between Mr. Grandon
Fuller and his followers, and Mr. Macon Hammerly. Ethel was in and out
of the room to take dictation, and to furnish books and figures when
required, so she heard much of the wrangle.

Jim Mayberry sat sullenly in his place at the table and had only one
declaration to repeat: It was not up to him! Mr. Fuller did most of the
talking.

Barton’s name was signed to the Kimberly schedule. He had O. K.’d it.
Two bad errors had crept into the specifications and the now absent
manager had overlooked them.

“And he was _absent_, all right, before ever he left here,” Fuller
scoffed. “Absent in his mind if not in body. And his absent-mindedness
has cost us a pretty penny. I can see right now that this board will
have to pass the next dividend.”

The very next day a block of five thousand shares sold in Boston for
eighty-seven and a half and two hundred in the New York market for
eight-seven flat.

One evening Ethel came home from work to be greeted by her mother in a
flurried state of mind.

“Good land, Ethel! What’s the matter with the Hapwood-Diller Company
now? I feared how it would be if Frank Barton went away.”

Ethel keenly remembered her mother’s expressed doubt of Mr. Barton’s
having much to do with the prosperity of the concern. Now she asked
Mrs. Clayton:

“What do you think is the matter at the factory? I don’t know what you
mean.”

“Well, I want to know! And you working right there, too. Here this
little lawyer comes around and offers me a ridiculous price for our
shares----”

“What lawyer?”

“I don’t know him. He says he’s from New York. Here’s his card,” and
she handed to Ethel a card on which was engraved “A. Schuster, Atty.”
and an address in a Wall Street building.

“Anyway, he seems to think he can buy our stock for sixty-five dollars.
That’s all he’ll offer and he just laughed and laughed when I told him
the shares of the Hapwood-Diller Company had never been worth less than
a hundred dollars apiece since they were printed.”

“What did he say to that?” asked her more than curious daughter.

“He declared sixty-five was better than it would sell in the market
in a month, unless the company was reorganized and put on a paying
basis. I wonder what Grandon Fuller or Hammerly would say to that? And
you ought to know the truth, Ethel,” added the worried woman. “Aren’t
things going right in the office now that Frank Barton’s gone away?”

“There is nothing to worry over,” her daughter said stoutly.

“Well, that’s what I told that little lawyer,” Mrs. Clayton declared.
“I said we’d just got our dividend check same’s usual, and he
said--What do you suppose he said?”

“I have no idea,” confessed Ethel.

“That it would be the last one we’d get for many a long day. Can that
be so, Ethel? I don’t know what we should do if our income from those
shares your great-uncle Diller left us should be cut off.”

“I shouldn’t worry, Mother,” Ethel said composedly.

Yet this was only one of the many things she began to hear which
suggested a coming catastrophe to the Hapwood-Diller Company.




CHAPTER XIV

BENWAY’S DISCOVERY


Benway Chase was to prepare a copy of the faulty specification sheet of
the Kimberly Binding Company’s order, to be attached to the report on
that unfortunate affair filed in the records of the board’s proceedings.

Ethel had not discussed the unfortunate matter with Benway, or with
anybody else. That Frank Barton could have allowed such an error--two
such errors, indeed--to escape his notice was scarcely in accord with
her belief in the general manager’s perspicacity. Her lips merely
tightened when anybody mentioned the tragic happening within her
hearing.

For it was indeed tragic. Rumors that the factory output was falling
behind and that the Hapwood-Diller Company was facing a situation
similar to that which had threatened it when Frank Barton had first
taken hold as manager, reached Ethel’s ears from all sides.

Although she could not understand how this mistake in the Kimberly
order could have happened, she accepted the claim of the ordering
company as honestly made, and that without question. The Kimberly
Company was not a second Bogata concern. They wanted the goods ordered
and were amply able to pay for them. The mistakes in the specifications
made much trouble for the purchasing corporation as well as for the
Hapwood-Diller Company.

This schedule from the Kimberly Binding Company had been copied in
duplicate in the Hapwood-Diller Company’s office, one copy with Frank
Barton’s name upon it being returned to the ordering firm, the other
filed where only properly accredited members of the Hapwood-Diller
Company’s office force supposedly were able to get at it.

The question as to how the two items on the schedule came to be
different from those on the sheet sent back to the Kimberly Company
bulked just as big in Ethel’s mind as the similar question regarding
the Bogata Company’s order. She felt that the same treacherous hand was
to be suspected.

It was not Frank Barton’s fault. Of this she was confident. But she
could not put an accusing finger on any person. That there was a
traitor in the Hapwood-Diller office went without saying. This time
Mr. Barton was too far away for her to discuss the point with him, and
Hammerly gave her no opportunity of speaking her mind.

Benway came with the copy he was making of the faulty schedule and
placed it before her. He was transcribing the paper in his own very
exact, upright handwriting. But he had made a mistake.

“Do you think that will be noticed, Ethel?” he asked with a measure of
suppressed excitement that she did not at first notice. “See where I
made a bull--and used the acid to take the ink out?”

“Why, yes, Benway; I see it--now that you call my attention to it. But
really you have made the correction very neatly. I think it will be all
right. The paper only shines a little on the surface where you erased
the ink marks with the acid.”

“That’s just it, Ethel,” he hissed, close to her ear. “The erasing
fluid leaves the surface of this sort of paper glossy. Now look at
this!”

He plumped the document he was copying--the schedule in which the two
errors had been found--under her eye.

“Why, what is it?”

“See anything wrong about those two mysterious lines?” he demanded, and
now she marked his excitement.

“Oh, Benway! That’s been all gone over. You can see there have been
no changes made in this original paper. There is no more shine to the
surface where those two errors stand than elsewhere. _That_ was taken
up in board meeting. I heard them discuss it. And I studied it myself.
No. There have surely been no erasures.”

“Sure?”

“You are very obstinate, Benway!” exclaimed Ethel impatiently.

“But look,” he whispered. “Here!” He snapped on the electric light over
her desk. “Look at those places on the slant--with the glare of the
light on them. Don’t you see that the paper has been roughened under
those two faulty lines--and nowhere else on the sheet? And see again!
Under the electric light the surface of the paper seems bluer at those
places than anywhere else. That is a good quality of paper, too.”

“Is--isn’t it a chance discoloration?” murmured the girl.

“Don’t you think that’s far-fetched?” demanded Benway. “Two blue
blots--and just where those wrong items are written?”

“Could they have been caused by drops of water?”

“Huh! Drops of something!” growled Benway. “I own to that belief. But
never water. Here! Use this reading glass. Don’t you see the raw fibre
of the paper? The surface has been scratched just where those wrong
items stand. Not by the sort of erasing fluid we use in this office;
but by some means. What do you think?”

Ethel passed the sensitive tips of her fingers lightly over the
indicated spots on the sheet. It seemed to her that she could feel the
slight roughness of the paper that Benway indicated so assuredly.

“You go back and finish your job, Benway,” she told him finally. “Then
bring me this original. Understand? Say nothing to anybody else about
it.”

“Sure!” he returned, his eyes snapping.

“Then if you are asked about it,” she added quietly, “you may say that
you gave me the paper and know nothing at all about it.”

He looked at her with more seriousness.

“Say, are you figuring on getting into trouble with----”

Ethel held up her hand. “You are not supposed to figure on this at all.
Just do as I say, Benway.”

“Oh! All right, Ma’am,” he said with a mocking little smile and a
twinkle in his eye.

Even he did not wholly understand the seriousness of the discovery;
but Ethel appreciated it fully. When he brought the original sheet of
specifications back to her she hid it in her dress and at noon instead
of going to lunch she caught a southbound car and rode to the Stone
Bridge.

On either side of the creek there were docks and warehouses; but Macon
Hammerly’s general store and row of storehouses for feed and grain
and such other things as he dealt in were beyond the bridge and some
distance along what was called the Creek Road. The Creek Road debouched
into the fanning country that adjoined Mailsburg somewhat abruptly, at
the south end of the town.

Really, Mr. Hammerly was a country merchant, always had been such, and
always would be. He had come into possession of his father’s store when
he was a young man, and it was said that his grandfather had first
engaged in business--the trading of general merchandise for pelts and
farm produce--on this very spot. However, the Macon Hammerly store and
warehouses were well known over a large area.

Being on the edge of the city the farming people were likely to trade
with him largely. And yet he was not considered a “good fellow.” He was
too sharp and severe in his business methods.

To his docks the sluggishly moving canal-boats came bringing grain and
feed and coal and other merchandise that he dealt in more largely. And
he was a wholesale dealer in many articles that other merchants in
Mailsburg sold at retail. For one thing, his was the largest seed house
in the county.

Ethel hurried over the arch of the Stone Bridge and down the narrow,
bricked walk across from the head of the several docks and the doors
of the warehouses upon them. This was an old, old part of the town;
indeed, it had been known as Stone Bridge once; but Mailsburg had grown
out to it and had all but enveloped it with new buildings and better
streets. Only down the Creek Road the land still was checkered with
open fields and patches of wood.

Before the weather-beaten building in which was Macon Hammerly’s
general store, was a wide, roofed porch. Several bewhittled armchairs,
just “wabbly” enough to be comfortable, stood about upon the platform.
Sometimes these were filled with Hammerly’s ancient cronies--cynics of
a former generation who had been in this world so long that they seemed
to believe they knew better how to run it than Omnipotence!

Mr. Hammerly was alone at one end of the porch. This was egg-buying
day, and as he dealt largely in eggs--shipping quantities to the larger
cities--the old man usually looked after the buying while his clerks
packed the boxes inside.

Hammerly believed if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing
well. Likewise he believed in that other old saw relative to a man’s
doing anything himself if he wanted to be sure it was done right. He
could not do everything of importance about his store and warehouses;
but he could--and did--buy eggs.

He watched the farmers and their wives cannily as they brought their
baskets up to the platform. He handled many of the eggs himself. It was
his inflexible rule to refuse all pullet eggs, and he had always in his
pocket a wooden curtain-pole ring of a certain size. If an egg would
slip through that, it was discarded.

Ethel chanced to arrive at a moment when there was a let-up in the
activities of egg buying. The grain dealer pushed up his spectacles
with that familiar gesture of his and grinned at the girl.

“You ain’t come away down here on no party call, Ethel?” he said
questioningly. “You know I ain’t in the swagger set, and I don’t serve
pink tea here.”

“No, sir,” she said, smiling in spite of her serious mood. “I know you
are a perfect barbarian.”

The man chuckled, but said only:

“Heard from Frank Barton yet?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“I got you beat, then,” he said, with twinkling eye. “Not direct; but
from Washington. Got a friend there and he’s kept me posted. The troop
ship _Tecumseh_ got over safely--as they all did, in fact. Them German
undersea boats seem to have been too far under the sea to catch ’em.
Frank’s safe in France.”

“Until he gets into the trenches,” said the girl bitterly.

“Don’t you be like these other folks, Ethel. Grouchers, every one!
Knocking the war, and looking on the black side of every cloud instead
of on the silver. The good Lord knows I’m no optimist by nature;
but these are the times when every one of us should stretch our
cheerfulness to the breaking point.

“Frank’s going to be all right. He’s going to do his duty, and he’s
going through with it all and come back to us. That’s my belief, Ethel.”

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly! I hope you are right.”

“If things go as smooth here with us as they do over there with him,”
he added, with twinkling eyes, “I reckon all will be well.”

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” she exclaimed again, “things are not going smoothly
here. At least, not with the Hapwood-Diller Company.”

“So that’s what brings you down here? I ain’t so flattered as I was,
Ethel,” he said good-naturedly. “Let’s hear your trouble.”

“Oh, you mustn’t think I’m not glad to see you,” she said, hurriedly.

“O’ course you’re glad,” he said, with something of a grin on his
wrinkled face. He stroked his chin reflectively. “Great times these,
an’ no mistake. If I was only younger----”

“You’d get into the war, I suppose.”

“Certain sure, I would. An’ you would, too, if you was a young man.”

“Perhaps--I really don’t know--it’s all so horrible.”

“So ’tis, an’ that German Kaiser has got a pile to answer for, believe
me. But now to business. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not sure that it’s really wrong. But it looks queer to me.”

“I see. Got some papers, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see ’em.”

She displayed the specification sheet and explained hurriedly Benway’s
discovery. The appearance of erasure in two places on the document
seemed plainer to Ethel each time she looked at it.

“I dunno,” drawled Hammerly, at first doubtful. But the longer he
looked at the two bluish marks the more deeply he was impressed with
the significance of them. “Can it be that we’ve got him at last?” he
finally questioned vigorously.

“_Him?_” repeated Ethel, curiously.

“There’s a dirty traitor in this business, Ethel,” declared the grain
dealer.

“Who do you think it is? Jim Mayberry?” she asked outright.

“He never did this,” declared Hammerly with emphasis. “He wouldn’t have
brains enough. That’s scarcely seeable, that rubbing out. And see how
close the handwriting has been copied.

“I see. That is Josephine Durand’s work--the original writing of the
sheet, I mean. We never use the typewriter on these specification
papers, because of the uneven ruling. She wrote both this and the copy
that went back to the Kimberly people with Mr. Barton’s name on it.”

“I know,” growled Hammerly, still staring closely at the paper.

“And Josephine is perfectly trustworthy, I am sure. Besides, it does
not seem possible that Mr. Barton did not closely compare the two
papers. Those figures were changed, I am sure, after Mr. Barton left.”

“Not a doubt on it! Not a doubt on it!” agreed Hammerly. “I’ve seen
something like this afore,” he added, more to himself than to the
girl. “You let me keep this paper, Ethel. We’ll see. How’s your ma?”

“Worried a good deal, Mr. Hammerly. That lawyer who came around to buy
her shares in the Hapwood-Diller Company really scared mother.”

“What lawyer?” snapped Macon Hammerly, instantly interested.

Ethel told of the incident and gave Mr. Hammerly the name and address
of the attorney, Mr. Schuster. “I believe he did secure a few shares
from some of the small stockholders,” Ethel said. “You know Abel
Rawlins had seven shares and Mrs. Henry Cutt a dozen. They sold, mother
says, and she is worried for fear the company is going to smash and we
may lose everything.”

“How many’s she got, Ethel?” asked the old man, a heavy frown on his
brow. And when Ethel told him, he added: “So? Israel Diller ought to’ve
done better by her than that. She was just as close’t kin to the old
man as Grandon Fuller’s wife.”

“Oh, we won’t talk about that,” said Ethel, with a gesture of
dismissal. “What is done, is done.”

“Humph! Mebbe! If it stays done!” grunted Macon Hammerly. “But it’s
been ten years and more now, ain’t it? Well! Howsomever, you let me
keep this paper a spell and see if I can make anything out of it.
I want to compare it with something I saw once--an’ had suspicions
about.”

He bought no more eggs personally that day--and probably some of pullet
size slipped by. Instead, when Ethel left him, he walked up into the
business section of High Street and there, near the court-house, went
into the office of Alfred Gainor, who, as Mr. Mestinger’s chief clerk,
had fallen heir to most of his clients and their business when the
older attorney died.

Mr. Mestinger had been the legal adviser of Israel Diller and had drawn
the latter’s will.




CHAPTER XV

FROM “OVER THERE”


Ethel Clayton went away from her interview with Macon Hammerly cheered
upon one particular point at least. His outlook upon the chance for
Frank Barton’s continued safety, even if he was in France, was helpful.
And she knew the old grain merchant had Barton’s well-being at heart.

Crabbed as he was with most people, Macon Hammerly had always betrayed
his interest in the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing
Company and his regard for him. He sometimes said, in his rough way,
that he kept Frank’s welfare in mind because the young fellow did not
know enough to look out for himself. Ethel knew, however, that Hammerly
had not been speaking carelessly about the absent Barton.

The latter was over the sea in safety, and the girl was devoutly
thankful for it. Indeed she added that thanksgiving to her prayers
before retiring. But she longed to hear personally from Barton. She
had already written him three letters since she had last seen him, all
addressed as he had told her; but they had brought no replies.

As before, while he was in the training camp, her letters were mostly
regarding office incidents which she knew he would be interested in.
But she had said nothing about the threatened trouble and loss to the
company through the mistake in the Kimberly Binding Company order.
Let somebody else tell the absent soldier that misfortune. Ethel was
determined to put nothing in her letters that was not cheerful.

She learned very quickly, as thousands of other people were learning
just at that time, how particularly hard it is to write cheerfully to
the men at war. The very fact of sitting down to write to a soldier
on active duty calls up before the mind a picture too terrible to be
ignored.

How do we know the letter will ever reach the one addressed? What peril
may he not face before our written words reach France and be delivered
to him?

In Ethel Clayton’s case, too, the pang of jealousy was not lacking.
She realized that her feeling for Frank Barton was not reciprocated.
He had never given her the least cause to believe that he had other
than the merest feeling of comradeship for her. Whereas it was plain
that for Grandon Fuller’s daughter he experienced a much deeper regard.
Nevertheless Ethel was jealous of Helen Fuller.

Mrs. Clayton thought her daughter was working too hard, and that
business worries depressed her. Benway Chase, too, noted her wan look
and increasing pallor.

“You’re overdoing it, Ethel,” he said one bleak evening when they were
walking home together.

“Overdoing _what_?” and her tone of voice admonished him that she did
not welcome his interference. Yet he persevered:

“You needn’t get mad. You shoulder too much responsibility--and for
that oaf, Jim Mayberry. Let him do some of his own work.”

She became gentler at once. Ben did not suspect why she so willingly
took upon herself the extra tasks. It was for the absent Barton that
she worked so hard, not for the manager _pro tem_. If he was spared to
come back to Mailsburg and the Hapwood-Diller Company, Ethel was going
to do all she could to hold his job for him!

“Somebody must do these things, Benway,” she said quietly. “I am in a
responsible position. From the very fact I am a woman, more is expected
of me if I would hold up my end of the work and satisfy everybody. And
if I do not look after the tags of work in the office, who will?”

“‘Tags of work!’” quoted Benway with emphatic disgust. “If _that_ were
only it! Oh, Ethel! I wish I could do it for you.”

“Thanks, Benway.”

“And you won’t even let me help,” he complained. “You don’t even talk
to me about your troubles. Why Ethel! I seem even less your friend now
that I am in the office with you than I used to be.”

“Goodness, Benway!” she exclaimed with renewed impatience, “you can’t
expect to take my personal troubles or my work on your shoulders.”

“Why not?” he demanded tenderly. “You know it’s what I’d love to do.
Oh, I wish I had a million and could take you out of all this! That’s
what I wish, Ethel.”

“Why, I don’t want to give up my work, Benway. Nor do I want to
be rich. At least, I never have thought of being wealthy. And a
million----”

“Well, I’d get along with even less,” he admitted drolly. “All I really
long for is a loaf, a jug of wine, a flivver, and thou.”

“My dear boy,” she declared briskly, “you’ll get your first three
wishes much easier than you will your fourth. Leave me out of the
category, please.

“I don’t want to go off in a flivver with any man and a loaf of bread
and a wine jug. I am wedded to my work. I love it. It’s just as much
my life as it is yours. I have never looked upon my work as a mere
stop-gap between high school or college and the wedded state--as is so
often the case with girls. _This is my job_, and I have no right to
expect you, or anybody else, Benway, to ease it for me.”

He looked at her aggrieved. “Is it always going to be so, Ethel?”

“I expect it will be always so,” she returned with less vehemence.
“I am not a marrying girl, Bennie. I wish you’d get that into your
handsome head. Get interested in some other girl--do!”

“Pshaw! Who told you you were not a marrying girl?” he demanded,
chuckling. “Wait till the right knock comes on the door.”

“I shan’t hear it. I shall be too busy.”

He was more serious for a moment.

“Perhaps there is danger of that. I’ve been knocking myself ever since
I can remember, and I get mighty little response.”

“Don’t waste your time, Bennie,” she said bruskly. “I tell you frankly:
Marriage is the last thing I expect to accomplish.”

“You’re wrong. It’s death that is the last thing for us all. But you
can’t break down my hopes, Ethel. I shall continue to knock.”

Somehow this insistence of Benway’s irritated Ethel more than usual.
She was almost sorry she had ever urged Mr. Barton to take him into the
offices, for the young fellow too plainly betrayed his interest in her.

It was bad enough for Sydney and the others to note the fact that
Benway was always ready to run her errands or otherwise be at her beck
and call; but Jim Mayberry made his uncouth comments upon it too.

“You have him trained like a little curly dog, haven’t you?” the
superintendent sneered one day, when Benway had anticipated some need
of Ethel’s. “He fetches and carries better than a retriever. Is he good
for anything else?”

“You had better ask Sydney if he does his work if you are afflicted
with blindness yourself, Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly.

“Oh, I’m not too blind to see there are a good many things going dead
wrong in this office,” Mayberry growled. “But I’m not having my way
here. We are under petticoat rule, it seems.”

Such hints as this had previously warned Ethel to keep still. Being
unable to have his way with her, Jim Mayberry would be glad to find
cause for bringing her before the Board of Directors for dismissal. She
felt all the time that if he ever did have the backing of the Board
members he would make quick changes in the office.

She knew herself to be in an uncertain situation. Really, she would
have done better for her future perhaps if she had looked about for
another position. Her record with the Hapwood-Diller Company, if she
left of her own volition, would obtain her work elsewhere.

But she could not do this. Tacitly she had promised to remain “on the
job.” Barton expected it of her. He had frankly said he felt secure
in leaving the company and going away because she would be there. She
was “the girl he left behind.” He depended upon her to keep things
straight. And perhaps, more than Frank Barton suspected, it was Ethel
who could hold his position for him until he returned from France.

If he ever did return! This thought scarified her mind continually. It
seemed just as though every German gun and every German bayonet were
pointed straight at the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company.
How could he escape with his life?

And then the letter came--the letter she had longed for. When John
tumbled it out of his bag upon her desk with the others, Ethel could
not suppress a little scream, for she saw it first of all. Little
Skinner and Josephine heard her and came running.

“What is it, Ethel?” demanded the latter.

“It’s a mouse, I bet!” said Skinner. “Some o’ them boys been playing a
joke on you, Miss Clayton?”

“Why, is it only a letter?” queried the other stenographer. “How you
startled me.”

“It’s enough to startle anybody,” declared Ethel, making the best of a
bad matter. “It’s from Mr. Barton.”

At that announcement even Sydney left his desk to draw near. Ethel’s
heart beat a warm alarm, but she could not get out of opening and
reading the missive there and then. Of course he would say nothing in
it that the office force could not safely hear. She knew it would be
merely a kindly message for all. She wished--oh, how deeply!--that it
might be of so intimate a nature that she could not read it aloud to
them.

He was within sound of the guns at the Front already. No locality was
particularized, for that would have been censored, but if he could hear
the heavy cannonade from his training camp it would not be long before
his battalion would be marching into the trenches.

No fear for the future was breathed through Barton’s chatty, friendly
letter. He gave such a picture of the camp, and the boys in khaki,
and the people about them, that even Sydney--his face working
spasmodically--clenched his fist and muttered:

“By heaven! how I wish I was over there with him.”

Benway’s eyes shone, too; and Mabel Skinner expressed for the hundredth
time the desire she had to be a boy.

“Why, I tell Boots that if I was him I’d run away and swear I was
nineteen and enlist.”

“It’s tough on you, Skinner,” drawled Jim Mayberry, who chanced to
be passing through and heard this outbreak. “Nothing but a pair of
trousers between you and glory.”

Little Skinner remembered that it was in office hours, so she made no
retort. Otherwise Mayberry would never have got away with it, as she
declared afterward.

However, she was really trying to eschew rudeness, especially within
the hearing of Benway Chase. Once or twice, as Ethel would not let him
hang around for her after hours, Benway had walked along with Mabel.
The girl had been delighted by these attentions. She began to dress
more quietly and gradually the startled expression left her face, for
she learned to arrange her hair more tastefully. Her improvement was
marked enough for others besides Ethel to notice it.

“By jove!” ejaculated Sydney, “our Skinner is coming into her own. She
looks more like a girl should and less like a boy dressed up in girl’s
togs.”

It was only Ethel, however, who suspected why Mabel was changing both
in manner and in appearance. That the girl worshiped Benway Chase
from afar Ethel did not doubt; but at first she was not sure that she
approved. Little Skinner came from such a very poor and “shiftless”
family. Should Benway look on Mabel with favor, Ethel feared that his
mother would be horror-stricken. Yet Ethel had told Benway she would be
glad to see him interested in some other girl.

If Barton’s letter did not cheer Ethel in large measure it linked her
more closely to the war and its activities. Hard as she had to work in
the offices, she found time to be active in the local Red Cross chapter
to which she belonged.

She insisted, too, in buying several of the second issue of Liberty
Bonds, although Mrs. Clayton was not in favor of her so doing.

“We have all the stocks and bonds and such things we can afford,” the
troubled woman declared. “If the Hapwood-Diller stock is going downhill
(and they tell me the Board will really pass the next dividend) we’ll
have to dig right into our little bank account, or else live as poor as
church mice.”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as that, Mother,” the girl declared. “I have a
steady income, you must remember--and that’s a good deal.”

“Yes, but not as much as it ought to be. I declare, in these times,
with prices of everything going up, wages should be about doubled.”

“If we doubled on the wages, we’d have to close down.”

“But you didn’t have to take more bonds.”

“I thought it was our patriotic duty to do that.”

“Let them do it that have more than we have, Ethel.”

“I think everybody ought to do all he or she can.”

“Well, maybe. But it’s hard on poor folks. And there’s another thing,”
added Mrs. Clayton suddenly.

“What is that?”

“I never did see such times! I couldn’t get sugar at all to-day; though
that trouble’s ’most over, they say. And if we didn’t have coal in our
cellar we’d go without a fire, I guess. You’d better hang on to what
money you’ve got, Ethel.”

“I’d like to know who’s been talking to you again about the company
being in difficulties!” her daughter said sharply. “It’s not so.”

“They tell me the shares are selling as low as seventy-five in Boston.
Flory Diller’s all of a twitter about selling. She wants to buy a piano
player, anyway; and if she sells her shares the money will belong to
her and never mind what John says, she’ll have that player.”

“It is such foolish people as Flory that make all the trouble,”
grumbled Ethel. “I wish you would not listen to them, Mother.”




CHAPTER XVI

THE CLOUDS THICKEN


News of the first raid against American troops in the trenches appeared
in the newspapers. There were but three deaths and a few captured and
missing; but the fact that a part of the American contingent had been
really in action could not fail to fire the imagination and swell
patriotic hearts on this side of the ocean.

But to Ethel, when she read, the three stark bodies laid to rest on
November the fourth in a little French village far back of the lines
loomed a more important thing than all else. To her troubled mind it
was only pitiful--not great--that a French general should, standing at
salute beside those graves, say: “In the name of France, I thank you.
God receive your souls. Farewell!” Nor did it bring aught but tears to
her eyes to read the translation of the inscription put at the foot of
these graves:

  “Here lie the first soldiers of the great Republic of the United
  States who died on the soil of France for Justice and Liberty,
  November 3, 1917.”

No. She could not yet feel the exaltation of spirit that had seized
Frank Barton and thousands of others in these early months of the war.
She had begun to feel her duty toward it, but she deplored the fact of
war and could not yet believe in the necessity for it.

It was all a horrid nightmare. The shocking fact that men were being
shot down, killed or maimed, still usurped all other thought regarding
it in her mind. Even Frank Barton’s letter, in which he pictured the
conditions in France and something of what he had already seen of the
effect of the German invasion, inspired Ethel with nothing but fear for
his safety.

He should be back in Mailsburg and at his desk in the Hapwood-Diller
Company offices. That is the way she saw it. And especially now, for
Ethel felt that there was some underhand work going on that she could
not fathom.

Since taking the Kimberly Binding Company schedule to Mr. Hammerly she
had heard nothing from the grain merchant. Nor had she seen him. But
Mr. Grandon Fuller came to confer with Jim Mayberry one day, and when
the latter sent out for Ethel to come into the private office the girl
intuitively knew that immediate trouble was brewing.

But she entered the room with perfect composure. Fuller, lounging in
his chair, looked at her with heavily lidded eyes. He left the talking
at first to Mayberry, and the latter was brusk indeed.

“Where’s that specification sheet of the Kimberly order, Ethel?”

“There is a copy of it attached to the report made for the Board, Mr.
Mayberry,” she said quietly.

“I want the original. I can’t find it on file,” snapped Mayberry.

“I do not know where it is,” she told him quite promptly.

“What! You don’t know whether it is in the office or not?”

“It is not in the office at present. Where it is I do not know. But the
copy is exact. Isn’t that sufficient?”

“You know well enough it isn’t what I want,” said the superintendent
roughly. “You are taking too much upon yourself, Ethel. You gave that
paper to Hammerly.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked.

“Let me tell you that he isn’t manager here----”

“Nor are you, Mr. Mayberry. I prefer not to be spoken to in this
manner. I saw no reason to refuse Mr. Hammerly permission to examine
the paper. If Mr. Fuller had asked for it I should have considered it
quite proper to hand it to him.”

She knew well enough by the expression upon the stockholder’s
countenance that she had hit the bull’s-eye. But Mayberry, red-faced
and blustering, declared:

“You usurp too much power here, Ethel. It has annoyed me before. I may
not be manager in name; but if I can’t be boss of the works without a
girl’s interference, I’ll throw up the job entirely.”

“No! Don’t say that, Mayberry!” interposed Fuller significantly. “Wait
until the Board meets again. We will see then.”

“You get that paper--get it at once!” ordered Mayberry in his very
ugliest tone. “And don’t let another private paper of this company go
out of the office--do you hear?”

“I am not deaf, Mr. Mayberry,” she said tartly. “You need not roar at
me.”

“Who are you working for, young woman?” Grandon Fuller asked, but in a
moderate voice. “The Hapwood-Diller Company, or Macon Hammerly?”

“_I_ am working for the company,” she said with significance.

“You will not be for long,” growled Mayberry. “Get that schedule back
from old Hammerly----”

“You will have to ask him for it, Mr. Mayberry,” she said. “If that is
all you called me in for, I have plenty to do outside,” and she walked
out of the private office.

Ethel was quite sure that she could make herself no more disliked
than she was already by both the superintendent and the principal
stockholder. But whatever came of the incident she proposed to keep
her self-respect. She would not allow any one to bully her.

It was open war now, however, between Jim Mayberry and herself. When
Mr. Fuller had gone the angry superintendent strode out to her desk. He
took no pains to smother his rage or his voice when he spoke to her.

“You’ll learn mighty soon, Ethel, that Frank Barton has lost his
influence in this concern--and there’ll be no come back, either. He’s
gone for good, whether the fool dodges a bullet or a bit of shrapnel or
not. He’s through here.

“And so you will be, and that very soon, if you don’t take a different
tone here. I may lack power to discharge you right now, but I shan’t
lack that power long. Then we’ll have a house cleaning,” and he glared
over the office as though he felt the enmity of Ethel’s desk-mates.

“Going to clean up for fair, are you, Jim?” asked Sydney, who
felt secure in his position, for he had been bookkeeper for the
Hapwood-Diller Company when the present superintendent was merely a boy
in one of the shops. “You’ll have your hands full if you intend to run
both the offices and the shops, won’t you?”

“I’ll show you as well as this blame girl----”

Benway Chase slipped down from his stool and started toward the
superintendent. Ethel stood up, her own hands clenched and her eyes
aflame.

“As long as I _am_ at work here, Mr. Mayberry, I refuse to be insulted
and browbeaten by you. If you have any instructions for me, let me hear
them. I don’t wish to hear anything else.”

Mayberry stamped out of the room. Mabel Skinner gave three cheers under
her breath.

“Oh, Miss Clayton! Ain’t you lovely! I’d have slapped his face!” she
added in approval.

This brought a laugh, and the office quickly simmered down. But Ethel
knew the matter was not ended. She could not help feeling worried about
the future. If Jim Mayberry had his way she would soon be out of a
situation.

Then at home her mother was forever talking about the decreasing value
of the Hapwood-Diller shares. She heard of other friends selling out
their stock at low prices.

She set her lips more firmly and refused to believe that disaster
threatened the concern that Frank Barton had all but sweated blood to
put on a paying basis. Yet there were signs enough that affairs were
not as they should be. There were little breakdowns in the machinery
that never happened before. One shop was closed for two days and the
work fell behind thereby. The profit was sliced completely from one
job, she knew, because of these handicaps.

And she was helpless to avert these crippling accidents, nor could she
point out who was at fault. Certainly there was no happening wherein
she could honestly accuse Mayberry of guiltiness, no matter how much
she may have believed him to be at the bottom of the trouble.

He had a good and valid excuse to offer the Board of Directors when
that body should investigate these petty affairs. Naturally he could
not give his attention so closely to the workmen as before. The foremen
ran their several departments more to suit themselves than when
Mayberry did not have to do two men’s work. It began to be remarked by
high and low alike that Jim Mayberry could not be expected to be both
superintendent and manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company!

And these whispers pointed to but one thing: The appointment of another
superintendent and the establishment of Mayberry in Frank Barton’s
place. The situation grew more and more difficult.

The possible end of these things troubled Ethel daily and hourly. Not
so much that she feared losing her own position. That would be sad, but
not a catastrophe.

Her main thought was for the future of the Hapwood-Diller Company.
There was a conspiracy against the concern. Who fathered the traitorous
design, and the object of it, she did not know. Jim Mayberry might
be only a tool, for, with Macon Hammerly, Ethel considered the
superintendent a weakling after all.

She doubted and feared Grandon Fuller. Yet he was the largest
stockholder in the concern--or his wife was, and he managed his wife’s
affairs. Surely it could not be pleasing to him to see the shares of
the company falling in the open market.

These matters were really outside of Ethel Clayton’s province. Yet they
would have been vitally troubling to Frank Barton were he at home and
in charge of affairs. And Ethel felt herself to be on watch for him.

If she might only confer with him! If she could tell him her suspicions
and reveal to him her worry over the Hapwood-Diller Company! This
longing obsessed her.

Arriving at home one evening rather early she saw, before reaching the
gate, a stranger leaving the premises. He was a small, black-haired man
who walked briskly away from the Clayton cottage. Her mother met her at
the door.

“He’s been here again, Ethel!” she exclaimed tragically when her
daughter ran up the steps.

“Who has been here?”

“That Schuster. The lawyer who wants to buy our shares of stock. But he
won’t give us but sixty now. My dear! I am afraid something dreadful is
going to happen.”

“There’s something going to happen to him!” ejaculated the girl with
emphasis. “Is that he yonder--that little runt?”

“Yes. And he said--”

But Ethel was down the steps and out of the gate without listening to
further particulars. She saw the man turn the corner and walk quickly
toward the car line. There was a path across the open fields past
Benway Chase’s house that brought one more quickly to the car tracks.
Ethel went this way.

“It’s the only thing to do,” she told herself. “The only thing to do.”

She was much disturbed in mind, and her course of action was by no
means exactly clear to her, just yet. But she was doing some quick
thinking.

Ordinarily she would not have minded had she met Benway, but now she
did not want to stop to talk, and so watched her chance to slip past
the house unobserved.

“Perhaps he’d try to help me, but I guess I don’t want his assistance,”
she reasoned.

She almost ran the distance. While yet some rods from the car line,
she saw a car bowling along but a short block away. She waved her hand
frantically.

The motorman was not looking her way, and consequently did not see her.
Then she called to him, and he braked up in a hurry.

“Always willing to accommodate the ladies,” he remarked with a grin.

She was already aboard the car, therefore, when the lawyer swung
himself up on the step and entered. There were several passengers and
he gave nobody more than a cursory glance. Therefore (and Ethel was
glad of the fact) he did not know her or suspect her identity.

There was a scheme afoot either to ruin the Hapwood-Diller Company,
or, more probably, to “freeze out” the smaller stockholders. Of this
the girl was confident. She believed A. Schuster was doing the secret
work for the plotters, and it might be that, if she trailed him, she
could learn just who it was who was at the bottom of this dastardly
conspiracy.

If Frank Barton were here, and possessed her knowledge of affairs and
her suspicions, would he not do the same? She believed so, and she
believed the situation called her to the task.




CHAPTER XVII

A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH


At just this point in Ethel Clayton’s business troubles, when she
wished so heartily that she could have the benefit of Barton’s advice,
the general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company was thinking very
little indeed of such tame affairs as those relating to the factory in
Mailsburg.

Like those other thousands who have a rendezvous with death on the
battleline, the intensive training and preparation for that event was
filling his whole thought, as well as taking up all his time. The
regiment to which Frank Barton was attached had plunged immediately
into such grilling work as many of the men had never in their lives
experienced.

In the first place, Barton’s detachment was billeted in a little
village which had before that day on which the American soldiery
marched in, escaped all contact with the Yankees, or, indeed, any
one outside its local confines. It was but a tiny collection of farm
cottages and stables builded together far back in feudal times for
protective reasons. Sanitation was an unknown word to the inhabitants.

Barton’s captain was taken down with pleuropneumonia almost at his
landing from the troop ship _Tecumseh_, and was in a hospital.
Barton as ranking lieutenant was in charge of the company of nearly
two hundred men. With the medical major he had the well-being, both
mental and physical, of these men upon his hands. It was a situation of
responsibility.

His second in command appeared before him on the first morning,
saluted, and said:

“Lieutenant Barton, I have to report, sir, that this place--er--really,
Lieutenant, _it stinks_.”

“So my nose tells me, Lieutenant Copley. The doctor likewise agrees
with us.”

“Bah jove!” groaned Morrison Copley, who could not altogether cast his
drawl on such sort notice. “What is to be done about it?”

“Clean up!” announced Barton vigorously.

And that was their first job. Precious piles of stable scrapings that
had occupied the little courtyards before the farmers’ cots, or had
been heaped in stable penthouses since time immemorial, were forked
into carts and spread upon the fallow ground outside the village.

It was a shock to the villagers, and at first they raised a great
clamor, for custom was being vastly disturbed. But when they were made
to see that the mules and horses of the American forces were adding
daily to the fertilizer piles and that the Yankee boys in removing
the manure to the fields were doing the farmers’ work, and that for
nothing, objections died among the French population of the village, if
not entirely among the soldiers themselves. But they made that village
clean and kept it clean.

Once Frank Barton burst out laughing and had to retreat to his
quarters to recover. The thought had struck him suddenly that if Madam
Copley--the haughty, somewhat snobbish Madam Copley--could see her son
bossing a gang forking over steaming manure piles, she would probably
swoon.

It was rather startling, too, when one considered what a metamorphosis
had come over Morry Copley. Even his voice had changed. Its shrillness
had been modified and when he gave an order now it was with the snap of
a whiplash in his tone.

Morry was diplomatic, too. In the cleaning up of the village this
ranked high, for he managed such French as he possessed most adroitly
and made the peasants who first thought they were being robbed agree
with him that it might be a good thing, once in a hundred years, to
scrape the manure platforms--and even the cobbled village street--right
down to the bone.

From that first week of occupancy, when effectual sanitary measures
were put into practice, right through the long season of trench
training that followed, Barton and his detachment were never idle
enough to suffer from homesickness.

Although the training field and trenches for this American division
were near enough to the battlefront for the big guns to be heard, they
were well hidden, and were defended from the enemy aircraft by a
special squadron of French flying machines and sentinel airplanes.

The plan of the German military leaders to bring some great disaster
upon the first American troops to arrive back of the battlelines, was
not yet accomplished. That the attempt would be made again and again
until the catastrophe was assured was well understood by the Americans
as well as by the allied training officers working with the division.

“The Boche will get you if you don’t watch out,” became a byword in
the Yankee camps. Perhaps the frequent cry of “wolf! wolf!” made the
Americans at last somewhat careless. Men who have always joked about
the lack of intelligence of German saloon-keepers and delicatessen
shopmen are not likely to be easily impressed by stories of Fritz’s
super-powers under the sea, on the earth, or in the air.

Working with his men all day and studying at night made up the round of
Barton’s existence during these first weeks in France. It was not often
he gave much attention to outside matters, or thought upon anything but
military tactics.

It was true there was a desire in the back of his mind at first to
learn how Helen Fuller was and where she was stationed in France--if
she really had come over. He wrote a friendly note to her addressed in
care of the Red Cross headquarters in Paris, but received no reply.

Then arrived Ethel’s first three letters, all in one mail. The
picture in them of Mailsburg and the affairs of the Hapwood-Diller
Manufacturing Company, pleased Barton greatly. He had not realized
before how hungry he was for news.

Jim Mayberry seemed to have forgotten him altogether. He was not so
dense that he did not understand Mayberry’s character in a measure.
Barton had never expected gratitude from the boyhood friend he had made
superintendent of the factory. Ethel’s letters, however, hinted at none
of the trouble Mayberry was making in Barton’s absence.

They were just cheerful narratives of the daily happenings that she
knew would interest the absent manager. He had already written one
general missive addressed to her; but now he sat down and replied
particularly to Ethel Clayton--a warm and friendly letter inspired by
a feeling that he had not before realized he held for the girl whom he
had always considered so “capable.”

He remembered how she had looked at him from her desk on the evening
of his final departure from Mailsburg. Actually he had never forgotten
this picture of the girl he had left behind to watch over the affairs
of the concern he had done so much for and which had meant so much to
him. She seemed to mean a deal more in his thought, too, than merely a
capable office assistant.

And she was a pretty girl. That Sunday she had visited the camp
at Lake Quehasset! There was no girl he knew who could look more
attractive. Why had he never noticed it before that day? Hers was a
less glowing, a less striking beauty than Helen Fuller’s, but it was a
beauty that once noted never lost its attraction for the appreciative
eye.

The lonely man in camp or barracks is sure to contemplate the memory of
his friends and acquaintances among womankind, and Barton’s mind dwelt
as never before on the girls and women he knew in Mailsburg.

“Why,” he thought, as he closed the long letter to Ethel, “I might have
tried to make a friend of her. I wonder why I did not try? Miss Clayton
is very much worth while.”

The wound caused by Helen Fuller’s treatment of him at the last,
was still raw. He felt that she had deliberately cultivated his
acquaintance, had made him believe she had more than a passing interest
in him, only to make the fall of his hopes seem the greater.

He wondered if Helen had really had for him exactly the same feeling
that she had for Morrison Copley or Charlie Bradley. Was she merely a
coquette, playing with men as a fisherman plays a trout--and for the
same reason? Was it merely for sport that she had exerted herself to
charm him?

Frank Barton felt all the hurt that a man of his kind does when he
awakes to the fact that he has been made a fool of by a guileful
woman. But he did not feel that pique which often turns a man from one
woman to accept the salve of another’s sympathy. In thinking of Ethel
Clayton and writing to her he had no such thought as this in mind.

No. Instead he threw himself with all his strength into his work.
He was acting ranking officer of his company, and he felt all the
responsibility which that implies. He desired to have his boys show at
inspection a higher degree of training than any other company in the
regiment. He kept his brother officers, as well as the non-commissioned
officers, up to the scratch by both example and precept.

“Barton’s a shark for work,” they all said. “He just eats it up!”

The notice of staff officers was drawn to his command and it brought
Lieutenant Barton some special attentions. He was taken with a group of
other advanced officers to the front line trenches and there learned
much of the actual work of modern warfare--much that would help him
when his brave boys “went in.”

And then, back with his detachment once more, the men of which were
“fit as a fiddle” and ready for any work, Frank Barton saw that day for
which he had been preparing all these long weeks and months.

It did not come just as he expected. He and his men were not moved
to some sector of the front where they would slip into the places of
wearied and mud-encrusted poilus at night. They did not go to the Hun
in fact; the Hun came to them.

The day began early indeed for Lieutenant Barton. He was up long before
reveille, for there was a line of motor-lorries stalled in the mud
just outside the village, that had been there half the night. Barton’s
company was called on for help.

For several days there had been a thaw and each night a thick and
penetrating fog arose from the saturated earth, wiping out the stars
completely and hanging a thick pall over the countryside.

Under the oversight of the non-commissioned officers, the men began
building miniature corduroy roads over the miry spots, and prying the
lorries’ wheels out of the mud so that they could get a start, one by
one, and go on through the village street.

Barton strode along the line of stalled trucks and their trailers
to the very last one in the procession. Beyond, the forelights of a
smaller motor-car showed in the mist. In curiosity he drew near to this.

“Any chance of getting by the jam, Lieutenant?” demanded an
unmistakably American voice.

“Not, now,” Barton responded, drawing nearer. “You will have to wait
for those trucks to get through the town.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I cannot say. By the way, perhaps you had better let me see your
passes. Save time. I happen to be in command here.”

“Oh, sure! Here you are, Lieutenant.”

The driver of the car stepped out, pulling several papers from an inner
pocket as he did so. Barton flashed the spotlight of his torch on them.
At the same moment a clear and well remembered voice spoke from the
tonneau:

“Why, it’s Frank Barton! How very odd!”

“Miss Fuller! Helen!” ejaculated the officer in equal amazement.

He turned his flashlight upon the occupants of the car. Two women in
nurse’s cloaks and an elderly French citizen were Helen’s companions.
She, too, was garbed as a Red Cross nurse.

“Oh, we shall be all right now!” the American girl cried.

She explained to her companions in French, but spoke so rapidly that
Barton could not follow her observations. The chauffeur, a keen-faced
American lad, evidently college-bred, chuckled and returned the papers
to his pocket.

“You see, Mr. Barton,” she said to the lieutenant, “we are going to
the base hospital on ahead--these ladies and I. Monsieur Renau goes to
the village there on business. I engaged Johnny Gear and his machine
to take us around this way because the railroad accommodations for
civilians, as you know, are dreadful. And here you find us stuck in the
mud,” she concluded dramatically.

“I fear you will be stuck in the mud more than once if you follow
this lorry train,” Barton said. “It has right of way and will leave an
almost impassable mire behind it.”

“Now you’ve said something, Lieutenant,” agreed Johnny Gear.

“But you can get us around it, of course, Frank,” said Helen
confidently, and in the tone of an American girl to whom nothing is
impossible if she has once made up her mind to get it.

“Not by any near road, Miss Helen,” he responded.

“Why! _there_ is a track,” the girl cried, for through a sudden rift in
the fog she could see a few yards. “Doesn’t that go around this village
you say is just ahead of us?”

“It leads into our training encampment. Nobody is allowed there without
special permit.”

“Oh, now, _Frank_----”

“But there is a road,” he hastened to add. “You must turn back. Half a
mile back you will find a road that encircles the whole field, and on
which you will not be challenged. I’ll go with you if you can back and
turn your car.”

“You bet I can,” agreed Gear. “Look out for the mud, Lieutenant.”

“Come and sit beside me, Frank,” the American girl said, quickly
opening the tonneau door on her side. “How are you--and the other
Mailsburg heroes? I’ve just lots and _lots_ to tell you!”

He slipped into the seat indicated and was introduced--after a
fashion--to the French girls and to Monsieur Renau. Gear got his car
turned about and they went lubbering on over the heavy road.

It was daybreak now but still very dark, with the world completely
smothered in fog. Almost by chance Barton discovered the entrance to
the encircling track he had spoken of. It was a twenty-mile trip around
the training field; but if he continued with them he was sure the party
would make it all right.

“And you _must_ see that we get through, Frank,” Helen Fuller urged.
“Really, you know, we’ve _got_ to get to our destination to-day.”

Barton smiled at her reassuringly. Her eyes were as bright as ever, her
smile as alluring. He quite forgot how cavalierly she had treated him
at their last meeting in Mailsburg.

“Drive right ahead, Mr. Gear,” he told the chauffeur. “There is almost
no heavy trucking over this road, and I think you will be able to get
ahead of the lorry train.”

Then he gave his attention to the girl beside him. She chattered in
her usual magpie fashion; yet Barton loved to hear her. Naturally of a
serious trend himself, Helen Fuller’s inconsequential talk had always
amused him. And much that she told him now about her experience since
coming to France was interesting.

That she was quite as sure as ever that her interests and her
activities were of more importance than anything else in the world,
a listener could not fail to understand. When she asked him of his
adventures she gave him no time for reply, but went on with her own
story. Nobody in the world mattered so much as Helen Fuller. It began
to irritate him after a while. It never had before.

The car plowed on for some time; it was Barton himself who stopped it.

“Wait!” he commanded. “What is that I hear? Shut off your engine, Mr.
Gear.”

Then they all heard it--the unmistakable roaring of a powerful motor.
Moreover it was not on the road before or behind them. It was in the
air.

“An aeroplane!” cried Helen.

“A very heavy aero--_hein_?” queried one of her fellow nurses.

“And that’s right!” exclaimed the driver. “Foggy as it is I suppose
there are plenty of flying men up yonder.”

“I have never heard a machine just like that,” Barton said, in a
puzzled tone. “I thought I had identified the sound of all these French
machines--Great heavens!”

A series of explosions interrupted his speech. Off to the left they
were, in the direction of the village and the cantonments. Through the
thick mist a flash or two was visible.

“Shells!” yelled Gear.

“An enemy plane dropping bombs!” ejaculated Barton. “Must have got past
the French escadrille in this fog.”

A nearer explosion followed and the roar of the aeroplane’s engine
seemed almost over their heads.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE WRATH OF THE HUN


“Oh! Oh!” cried Helen, clinging tightly to Barton’s arm. “Let us turn
back!”

“What good’ll that do!” growled Gear, who heard her.

One of the French nurses crossed herself and murmured a prayer as
Barton could see by her whispering lips. He could not fail to note how
much better the French girls were taking it than Helen. She had quite
lost her self-control and was fairly hysterical.

He could not afford to show any trepidation himself, even if he felt
it. He was in the uniform of an officer of the American forces and
there were French eyes upon him. In any case he must not show the white
feather, and it stabbed his pride that Helen, an American Red Cross
nurse, should do so.

An aerial bomb fell nearer and almost deafened them with its explosion.
Barton sprang out of the motor-car and aided Helen to alight.

“Into the ditch--everybody!” he shouted. “Lie down!”

He saw Renau and Gear spring to the help of the other women, then in a
moment Barton was rushing toward the muddy sluiceway with Helen Fuller.

“Oh, _don’t_ drag me around so, Frank! I’m wet to my _knees_. Isn’t
there some place--”

The roaring of the powerful motor overhead drowned her further
complaint. It was then that another shell fell.

Had Barton not dragged the girl down with him--both falling flat into
the bottom of the ditch--they must have suffered the fate of those
who had not yet got away from the motor-car--the two nurses, Monsieur
Renau, and poor smiling, reckless Johnny Gear, Johnny, who had run away
from home to “see what the blooming war was like.”

Overhead the aero engine moaned into the distance. Barton got to his
knees and pulled the girl up beside him. It was light enough for them
to see each other.

“Oh! Oh! Take me away! I must go somewhere. Oh, Frank! I--I’m all
_muddy_,” Helen, poor shallow, selfish Helen, wailed.

“Oh!” gasped Barton, unheeding. “They’re dead--dead!”

He stood up and tossed back the thick hair from his brow. He had not
his cap. He found his army pistol gripped in his right hand. His left
was holding up the girl whom he clutched by the shoulder as carelessly
as he might have held a half-filled sack of flour.

“You’re not _listening_!” cried Helen. “Don’t you _hear_? Take me
somewhere--take me where it is _safe_.”

He was listening, but not to her cries. That terrible thing in the air
was coming back.

The moan of the powerful engine was increasing again. A few guns
in the distance began to pop. The Field Artillery was getting into
action--_and he was not there_.

What carnage might not have already been accomplished! This terrible
thing in the air, swooping through the fog, might have brought havoc
and disaster to the American forces.

“Take me away! Take me away!” the girl cried over and over again,
fairly clawing at his arm to attract his attention.

“Where shall I take you? One place is as safe as another--until this
raid is over.”

It was growing lighter all the time. The fog was rapidly thinning.
Suddenly Helen shrieked:

“Where is our car?”

There was nothing but a hole in the road where it had stood. Not a
shred of it remained within their straining vision. Wiped out--like
that!

“Here it comes again!” shouted Barton.

Through the dissipating mist the great sausage-like body of the German
air-raider appeared. It was one of the newest and largest airships yet
conceived and built. It drifted low--not two hundred yards from the
earth.

“Down on the ground!” commanded Barton. “If they spy us----”

[Illustration: He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled
clumsily above the spot.
                                                      (_See page 201_)]

The huge flying car swooped lower. It seemed to be heading directly for
the two Americans in the muddy road. The lieutenant flung the girl down
again, but stood erect himself, his legs astride, his head back, eyes
glaring through the shreds of fog at the airship. He had involuntarily
assumed an attitude of defiance and his pistol was raised at firing
angle.

He did fire--futilely, perhaps--as the great car circled clumsily above
the spot. He emptied the weapon at the flying foe.

Suddenly--whether a chance bullet had hit some vital spot or not--a red
flame leaped to life in the envelope of the huge bag. So low sailed the
machine that Barton could see a man run along a narrow platform and
shoot the spray of a chemical fire extinguisher up at the spreading
flame.

Only for a moment was this attempt continued. Then a second man
appeared, and the usual high, staccato voice of a Prussian officer
uttering a command sounded sharply through the rumble of the dying
motor.

The efforts of the man with the fire extinguisher ceased. Some
catastrophe had overtaken the huge war machine. Her engine had lost its
stroke. She was coming to earth--and that in enemy territory. The crew
would destroy the ship as they always do in such instances.

A wild cheer burst from Barton’s lips. Swiftly he reloaded his
automatic pistol. The nose of the wabbly, creaking machine, so clumsy
looking that Barton half wondered how it was ever lifted from the
ground, plunged toward the earth.

It passed directly over the road. The balloon envelope was afire in a
dozen places. Barton could see the flash of an axe in the officer’s
hands as he wrecked the mechanism of the still flying airship.

There was a deafening crash when the car hit the ground. The American
saw one man, turning over and over in the air, dashed forty feet at
least by the force of the impact. Other figures climbed down from the
crushed car on to which the balloon collapsed slowly, all afire.

“Come on!” shouted the excited lieutenant, waving his weapon. “Now
we’ve got ’em!”

“Frank! Stop! Don’t you _dare_ leave me!” wailed Helen Fuller.

“Wait for me here, Helen----”

“I tell you I _won’t_!” cried the girl. She stamped her foot in rage.
“You take me right away from here!”

“But I must round those fellows up. We’ve got ’em--don’t you see? Wait
here for me if you are afraid.”

“I’ll _never_ forgive you, Frank Barton, if you leave me! And I _won’t_
go over there! Those--those men will kill us. Oh, Frank! Come back!”

He hesitated but a moment to answer her. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want
me to be a quitter, Helen,” he declared, and leaped the ditch to get
into the field upon which the wrecked German airship had fallen.

With a scream she followed him. She ran faster than he, and caught
his right arm again just as he was rounding the rear of the wreckage.
Before them stood fourteen men in the gray olive of the German uniform.
The man thrown when the ship came down never moved.

Barton saw instantly that the crew of the airship--even the commander
himself--were unarmed. Good reason for that. Deep in the enemy’s
country, without a possible chance of escape through the lines, a
peaceful demeanor and appearance spelled safety for them.

Barton raised his pistol, Helen still clinging to his arm. The Germans,
or, at least, those in the front of the group, raised their hands in
token of surrender. Even the commander called out: “_Kamerad!_”

“Frank Barton! Take me away! Save me!” shrieked the hysterical girl.

She hung, a dead weight, upon his arm and pulled down the weapon. One
of the men in the back of the group had been stooping down, his hands
on the ground. Now he stood up, stepped clear of his companions, and
swung his right hand back.

With the accuracy of a baseball player he flung the sharp stone he had
picked up. Barton tried to fire and dodge, but Helen’s interference
made both attempts impossible. The stone struck him just above the
right temple and glanced off, cutting such a gash that the blood poured
down his face, blinding him.

With a shout the Germans started for Barton and the girl. The
lieutenant, feeling himself helpless, thrust his weapon into Helen’s
hand.

“Defend yourself!” he gasped, and then slipped slowly to the ground,
crumpling in a senseless heap at her feet.




CHAPTER XIX

UNCERTAINTIES


Had Ethel Clayton known how deep in wild adventure Barton was as she
rode down town in the surface car watching the little lawyer, she would
have been utterly disgruntled at the tameness of her quest.

Yet it was with thought of Barton in her mind, as well as of her own
personal interest and that of her mother’s, that the girl forged on.
She believed that a conspiracy was on foot the intent of which was the
ruining of the business structure Frank Barton had labored so hard to
build and make secure. He had made the Hapwood-Diller Company a going
concern. Somebody was now determined to make abortive all the general
manger’s work and, as well, to ruin the smaller stockholders.

Who that somebody was Ethel was not certain, although she had strong
suspicions. She believed A. Schuster to be the link connecting her
suspicions with the truth. She sat quietly in the car and did not even
glance his way after her first hasty appreciation of the man when he
had entered.

In front of the Bellevue he left the car, but Ethel went on to the
next crossing before alighting. She hurried back. Under the bunch of
electric lights before the main door of the hotel she saw A. Schuster
pass in.

She had expected this. Both Mr. Grandon Fuller and Jim Mayberry she
knew to be habitués of the hotel. There was a public dining-room at one
side of the front door and the lobby and office were on the other, with
the smoking-room and café back of the clerk’s desk.

Ethel had already made up her mind what she would do in this emergency.
She mounted the broad steps briskly and crossed the lobby toward the
small ladies’ parlor behind the stairway. A glance to the right showed
her the black-haired lawyer approaching the desk.

In one chair lounged the pursy Mr. Fuller. He vouchsafed Schuster no
more than a glance. But Jim Mayberry, coming from the smoking-room,
hailed the lawyer affably:

“Hi, old man! going to have supper with me? Come on upstairs while I
get into my best bib and tucker for the evening.”

He clapped Schuster heartily on the shoulder and led him away toward
the little elevator that wheezed upward asthmatically the next moment.
Neither had looked at Grandon Fuller nor he at them.

This fact was sufficient to have made Ethel Clayton suspicious had
she not been so before. Jim Mayberry was always so very polite
and deferential to Mr. Fuller when the latter appeared at the
factory offices. It seemed now as though the superintendent of
the Hapwood-Diller Company had ignored the presence of the chief
stockholder too obviously.

Ethel passed hastily on to the parlor; but nothing of this had escaped
her quick eye and understanding. In the parlor she found a girl in cap
and apron whom she knew. It was Eliza Boling, who presided over the
linen room of the hotel and acted as a sort of floor clerk on the third
floor. Ethel had gone to school with the girl.

“Oh, Ethel! come up to my desk so we can talk,” cried Miss Boling, when
she caught sight of Miss Clayton. “I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”

Ethel was nothing loath under the circumstances, and ran upstairs with
her. The slowly moving elevator had scarcely more than deposited Jim
Mayberry and the lawyer on the third floor. Ethel saw them approaching
one of the doors.

“Isn’t that Mr. Mayberry?” she asked her acquaintance.

“Oh, I suppose it is,” replied the other girl without looking up.
“Don’t let him speak to you. He’s so awfully fresh!”

“Is that his room?” Ethel asked.

“Number Eighty? Yes. And I wish it was on another floor.”

Eliza Boling was a somewhat attractive girl, and Ethel could understand
easily that the superintendent of the Hapwood-Diller Company would
have made himself objectionable to her.

The two girls talked of mutual friends and affairs of mutual interest
for some time. Then the elevator door clanged again. Ethel looked
quickly. The heavy figure of Mr. Grandon Fuller stepped out into the
corridor. He did not glance toward the two girls.

Mr. Fuller walked straight to the door of Number Eighty. He rapped once
and then entered the room. It was plain his coming was expected.

Ethel had seen enough to assure her that Fuller, Jim Mayberry, and the
sly looking Schuster were engaged in something that they wished to keep
secret from people in general.

She believed she had traced the conspirators. The reason for the
largest stockholder of the Hapwood-Diller Company seeking to wreck that
concern was, however, beyond Ethel Clayton’s powers of divination.

For that was exactly the threat of circumstances as the girl saw it.
The forcing down of the price of Hapwood-Diller stock must in the end
ruin the credit of the corporation. She went home vastly puzzled by the
whole situation.

Her mother was utterly unstrung.

“Oh, Ethel, I feel terribly condemned!” she cried. “Where have you
been? I wish you had come in earlier so as to hear that Mr. Schuster
talk.”

“I don’t want to hear him talk,” declared her daughter.

“It seems to me, Ethel,” complained Mrs. Clayton, “that you are siding
against me--against your own interests. I suppose you call that loyalty
to your employer. But Frank Barton isn’t there at the offices any more.
He never ought to have gone away. I am convinced of that now. The
business is on its last legs. You know it is, but you won’t admit it.”

“I know nothing of the kind, Mother!” cried Ethel with exasperation.
“Why, you talk about the Hapwood-Diller Company as these pro-Germans do
about the war! And just as unreasonably.”

“What do you mean--calling your own mother a pro-German?” demanded Mrs.
Clayton. “I guess I’m just as good a patriot as the next one--and I
knit as many socks and sweaters, too!

“But about our shares of stock--that’s different. Since you’ve been
away Amy Hopper’s been in and she’s sold her shares--she had ten--and
has bought a Ford car. At least, she’s got something for her money,
while we are likely to lose everything.”

Ethel was just completing her warmed-over supper, and under a steady
dropping of her mother’s complaints, when the porch door banged open
and Benway Chase rushed in.

“Goodness, Bennie, how you scared me!” Mrs. Clayton ejaculated. “Sit
down and have a piece of pie--do!”

“No. But I’ll stand up and eat it--many thanks, Mrs. Clayton!”
responded the young fellow, whipping the piece of pie off the plate
she offered him and inserting it like a wedge into his mouth for the
first bite. Somehow he managed to utter: “Fire at the factory, Ethel.
Get on your hat and coat.”

“No! Benway?” she gasped, starting up.

“Surest thing you know! You can see the smoke from the street. I
telephoned. It’s confined to Shop Four. The firemen are there. But
let’s go down and see that nothing’s damaged around the offices.”

She ran for her coat and hat and they sallied forth, Benway swallowing
the last of the pie as they cleared the gate. “Gee! but your mother
does make good pie crust, Ethel,” he said.

His boyishness somehow troubled her more than it usually did just then.
Perhaps because her own thoughts were so serious. He would make a good
match for Mabel Skinner. He would never grow up enough for Ethel to
consider him for a moment as a partner in life.

The fire was under control when the two young people reached the
factory. Nor had it done much damage. Moreover, it was well covered
with insurance; but the delay in work under way would be considerable.

“By jove!” said Benway, “the old H-D Company is up against it for fair.
Everything is going wrong with it. You’d think the place was bewitched,
wouldn’t you?”

“Hush! Let us not talk about such things. John says it was faulty
insulation. But how came there to be faulty insulation in that shop?
Somebody is guilty of criminal carelessness. Oh, I wish Frank Barton
were here!”

This last wish she did not let Benway hear. And, indeed, what could
Barton have done had he been on the spot? The Board of Directors met
the next day and even Mr. Hammerly could find nobody to “jack up.”

The grain dealer was in a fine rage, however. The meeting was as
acrimonious a session as had ever been held since the reorganization
of the corporation. Ethel was only called into the room once and then
Hammerly did not speak to her. And after the meeting he pulled his hat
down over his ears and stamped out of the offices without a word.

She wondered what he had done with the paper she had given him--the
specification sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company order. It seemed
strange that he had never taken her into his confidence at all about
that matter.

It leaked out in some way, however, after this meeting, that the old
grain merchant was beaten by Grandon Fuller and his friends and that
Jim Mayberry was likely to be made manager in Barton’s place at the
next quarterly meeting. She had noticed that the superintendent left
the Board meeting with a smile. He had given Ethel a hard look, and
she was well aware of what awaited her in the near future if Mayberry
had his way.

There was a streak of fair weather for her in a day or two, however.
Another letter arrived from France, and this time it was not merely an
impersonal narrative of the absent’s manager’s adventures in uniform.
There was an intimate note to the missive that warmed Ethel’s heart
to a glow. Yet she realized that not a phrase went beyond proper
friendliness.

She read it all to the others in the office, although it was not just
the same as his first letter had been. She did not let the sheets go
out of her own hands, however. There was a personal atmosphere to it
which made her fold the letter finally and hide it in her blouse. This
betrayed a softness that would have angered Ethel had anybody accused
her of it.

Other people heard about the letter, however, and she was stopped
for several days upon the street by friends of Barton asking after
him. Secretly she was proud that it was she whom he had selected as a
correspondent among all those who knew and were interested in him here
in Mailsburg.

Then Mrs. Trevor came to the office to see her. The boarding-house
mistress who had housed and fed Frank Barton so long was a rather grim
woman in an old-fashioned Paisley shawl and arctics. Her hands were red
and gnarled and her back was as curveless as a ramrod.

When she strode into the Hapwood-Diller offices she was as stern as
a grenadier. Her mere appearance quelled even Mabel Skinner. But when
she came close to Ethel Clayton’s desk the girl saw that her eyelids
were red-rimmed and that she had difficulty in keeping her lips from
trembling.

“Miss Clayton--you’re Miss Clayton, ain’t you?” she began. “Ethel
Clayton?”

“Yes,” agreed Ethel. “You are Mrs. Trevor?”

The woman nodded. Then said: “What do you know about Frank Barton? I
hear you got a letter from him?”

“Yes, Mrs. Trevor.”

“When was it writ?”

Ethel told her, understanding too well to consider Mrs. Trevor at all
impertinent. She told her most of what was in the letter, too, for it
was burned into her memory too clearly for her to forget what Frank
Barton had said.

“Well,” said the woman, with a sigh, “I had to know. I expect I’m an
old fool. But that boy was with me long, Miss Clayton.”

“I think I understand,” the girl said gently.

“You see, I got to dreaming of him. Night afore last I had a terrible
dream. I saw him with his face all bloody, his empty hands in the
air--sort of clutching like--and him falling down just like he was
dead. And there was smoke and fire all about, just as though he was in
battle. It’s worried me a lot.”

“I should think it would, Mrs. Trevor,” Ethel said. “But you know,
they say dreams go by contraries.”

“So they say, but I don’t know as it is always true. I’ve had
dreams----”

“Oh, you mustn’t let dreams get on your nerves,” broke in Ethel hastily.

“Well, the dear boy meant so much to me. You can’t imagine what a good
boarder he was--no trouble at all--leas’wise not alongside o’ some of
’em. Lordy! what a lot of trouble some of ’em do make, to be sure. But
Frank Barton--he’s one boy out of a thousand, yes, he is;” and the old
boarding-house mistress bobbed her head vigorously.

“You mustn’t worry. It will be all right, I’m sure,” answered the girl,
but rather weakly.

“You feel sure, Miss Clayton?”

“You must look on the bright side. It will be all right.”

“Well, I hope so!” The woman then tramped out of the office. She was
plainly relieved and comforted. But Ethel was not.

Of course she did not believe in dreams. But what Mrs. Trevor had said
remained in the girl’s mind--stuck to her memory like a burr. She was
constantly seeing Frank Barton falling down, his face masked in blood.
She almost accepted Mrs. Trevor’s vision as prophetic.

Then came the day when the Mailsburg _Clarion_ printed an afternoon
extra edition. Those in the office heard the boys shouting it under the
windows and Benway Chase ran out to buy a paper. Across the sheet was
the headline:

  GERMAN AIR RAID ON AMERICAN CAMP!
      METEOR DIVISION BOMBED!

The Field Artillery with which Frank Barton served was a part of the
so-styled Meteor Division.

Ethel Clayton realized this while the paper was still across the room
from her. She sat perfectly still at her desk, clutching the edge of it
to keep down the cry that rose to her lips.




CHAPTER XX

SO FAR AWAY!


Benway Chase was looking at her and Ethel realized that in the boy’s
eyes there was an expression of pain and despair that gave almost a
tragic cast to his countenance. He had suddenly become aware that his
old-time friend, the girl he had always worshiped, was given to the
very last fibre of her being to another.

His lips moved stiffly as he came nearer to her desk.

“Is it Mr. Barton’s division!” he questioned, brokenly. “Oh, Ethel!”

“His Field Artillery is a part of the Meteor Division,” she said, and
was surprised that her voice was unshaken.

“And you--” He did not finish the speech. His gaze dropped. The others
gathered around to read the startling news in the _Clarion_.

Besides the headlines emblazoned across the page, there was not much
to read. The War Department merely announced that it was reported--a
report as yet unverified--that the Germans had raided the American
camp. No casualties were announced. As previously declared, the
Department would make all particulars public as soon as the undisputed
facts were received from the officer commanding the division.

Mayberry must have heard the buzz of conversation from the private
office. He appeared, an ominous scowl on his brow.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Is this all you people have to
do? I believe the Hapwood-Diller Company could get along just as well
with half the office force we have.”

“Let you and me enlist, Mayberry,” suggested Sydney. “They could get
along without us, that’s sure.”

Little Skinner giggled. The superintendent, who had some fear of
Sydney, strode forward without replying to the bookkeeper and took the
paper out of Josephine Durand’s hand. He held some papers in a sheaf
in his left hand and when he caught sight of the headlines he put his
papers on the desk the better to handle the smutted newspaper.

Ethel had not risen. In flapping open the _Clarion_ Mayberry started a
circulation of air that scattered his sheaf of papers. Ethel gathered
them together and stacked them into a neat packet. But this time a
different paper was on top of the pile. She saw that the top sheet was
headed: “A. Schuster.”

“What’s all this about?” Mayberry was saying. “Murder! Was Barton in
it?”

“His battalion is attached to that division, Mr. Mayberry,” Benway
said.

“Well, maybe he’s seen some real fighting, then,” the superintendent
said cheerfully. “That’s what he went over there for, I suppose.”

He dropped the _Clarion_ upon Ethel’s desk and picked up his papers.
Seeing what lay on top he flashed the girl a sudden suspicious glance.
But Ethel seemed oblivious of it.

Indeed, it seemed as though all save the phlegmatic superintendent were
too thoroughly disturbed to set their minds on office matters. Ethel
betrayed less emotion than most of them, perhaps; but then it was her
nature to hide her keener feelings.

The few following days she found hard to live through. The strain upon
her patience was great. The papers were filled with frothings and
imaginations about the raid on the American camp. Then came the truth
with the list of casualties.

The list was small. One enlisted man killed, seven wounded and one
missing. The huge German flying machine had been brought down, one
of its crew losing his life, the other fourteen being captured by
Second-Lieutenant Charles Bradley with a part of his company.

With hungry eyes Ethel Clayton read the list of casualties. The last
line yielded the news which she had feared all along:

  “_Lieutenant F. Barton, Field Artillery, missing._”

There was a full account in the papers of the raid and the bringing
down of the German raider. But the single statement, that Frank Barton
was missing, added a spice of mystery to the affair that created a good
deal of excitement in Mailsburg.

It could not be possible, if all the German raiders were captured or
killed, that Frank Barton was himself captured and taken into the
German lines. That seemed improbable. Yet the sinister report stood.

What had happened to him? Would Ethel ever hear from him again? Was his
fate to be one of those mysteries of war that are never satisfactorily
explained? Of the three lurid headings of the casualty list, killed,
wounded, missing, the last is always the most nerve-breaking.

Just at this time, however, Ethel Clayton’s mind was scarified by other
and serious troubles. She had decided that at last the evidence of
conspiracy was sufficient to lay before Mr. Hammerly; and as the latter
seemed to make no move the girl went to him.

“The quarterly meeting is near. I understand that Mr. Mayberry is to be
advanced to Mr. Barton’s position,” she said to the old grain dealer.
“To me it looks like ruin for us all. My mother has some interest
in it, Mr. Hammerly, so I am speaking for her, not for myself as an
employee.”

“Humph! No! You’d best keep out of it, Ethel,” said the old man. “Leave
this to me. I’ve learned something about this Schuster, though I never
saw him. If I need your evidence I’ll call on you in the board meeting.
But I reckon I can link up A. Schuster with the proper parties without
your verbal testimony.”

Meanwhile Jim Mayberry made himself as unpleasant around the offices as
he could. He felt, it seemed, that he would soon have all the force at
his mercy, unless it were Sydney. He would scarcely dare discharge the
bookkeeper, who had been so long with the corporation.

“Mayberry hangs the sword of Damocles over our heads,” Benway growled
one evening to Ethel. “I can feel the breath of it on the back of my
neck, at least. I might as well be looking around for another job.”

Ethel had no word of comfort for him. She did not see herself just how
it was coming out. It seemed probable that Frank Barton would never
come back now; so why should the stockholders keep his situation for
him?

The day for the quarterly board meeting arrived, and the board room
buzzed like a hive of disturbed bees. Thoroughly in touch as she was
with the reports from all departments, Ethel knew very well that the
expected blow must fall.

The usual dividend must be passed. The circumstances of the corporation
would not allow anything else to be done. The last two quarterly
reports showed a decline in profits, in production, and in value of
plant, which fairly staggered most of the board members.

“It stands to reason,” Grandon Fuller stated in his decided way, “that
before he went away, Mr. Barton was covering up a good many things that
he would better have given us notice of. We can excuse the enthusiasm
and anxiety of the young, perhaps; he was very desirous of getting
out of it all and putting on the army khaki. But now we have suffered
enough--this corporation I mean--because of his mistakes. We must get
back on a stable foundation. Somebody must get a firm grip upon the
Hapwood-Diller Company.”

“Suppose Brother Fuller tells us just wherein Frank Barton is to be
blamed for our present situation?” suggested Macon Hammerly, with
surprising gentleness for him. “We want facts, not allegations.”

“You know very well how he bungled that Kimberly order.”

“I have affidavits of a chemist and two handwriting experts here,”
interposed Hammerly, shuffling the papers before him, “which state
that two lines in the Kimberly Company’s schedule sheet were erased,
and in the two interpolated lines an attempt made by somebody to copy
the writing of the young woman who made the schedule. In other words
a deliberate and successful attempt to change the substance of the
Kimberly order was made after it passed out of Mr. Barton’s hands.”

There was immediate uproar--denial by Fuller and angry talk by some
of the other members of the board. Hammerly grimly displayed his
affidavits and proved his case to the satisfaction of most of the board
of directors.

“The fact remains,” cried Grandon Fuller, “that our shares are selling
in the open market as low as sixty. The news has got out that the
business is tottering for want of a strong hand to manage it.”

“We’ll take that up, too,” interposed Hammerly. “I have here a list of
shares and whom they were bought from by a man named A. Schuster. These
shares have been thrown on the market by various brokers at ridiculous
prices. They were all bought up again by A. Schuster! And this same
tricky legal light has been the representative of a certain member of
this board in New York for the past three years.”

This remarkable statement produced a profound sensation. For a brief
instant there was intense silence as the members of the board looked at
each other. Then--

“What are you saying?”

“That’s a grave accusation!”

“Can you prove your words?”

“It’s a crime to do what you’re hinting at, Hammerly.”

“He can’t prove a thing!”

“He don’t know what he’s talking about!”

“Shut him up!”

“He ought to be put out of the meeting!”

“That’s the talk. He is going too far. This is a meeting of gentlemen.”

Thus came the chorus of objections, not alone from Grandon Fuller. But
Macon Hammerly’s scowl quelled the riot.

“I know whereof I speak,” he said solemnly. “I have papers and
witnesses to prove it. And I have reason to suppose, in addition, that
Mr. Grandon Fuller has made some wash sales of his own shares of the
Hapwood-Diller Company that in the first place bore down the price. Let
him deny it if he dares!”




CHAPTER XXI

THE BURDEN


The game of “freeze out” fathered by the heaviest stockholder in
the Hapwood-Diller Company betrayed by Macon Hammerly’s confident
statements was but an incident of that stormy meeting of the board. The
latter was thoroughly reorganized before the end of the session. And
that spelled utter defeat for Mr. Fuller’s plans.

He held some of his friends on the board; but Hammerly was a shrewd
politician. He voted more proxies than Fuller could assemble. The
latter found himself ousted from the chairmanship; the grain merchant
was voted into the vacant place by a satisfactory majority. The smoke
of battle cleared away, leaving Grandon Fuller slumped down in his
chair with a sour face and Jim Mayberry looking glum and at the same
time half-frightened and half-dazed.

“Send for Ethel Clayton,” ordered the new chairman. “We want
stenographic notes of what goes on here. If any of our stockholders
question what we do we must be able to spread before them an exact
report of our actions. Under the old régime this was impossible. There
was too much secret diplomacy here,” and he grinned.

Ethel realized the tenseness of the situation when she came into the
board room, book and pencil in hand. She was given a seat at Hammerly’s
right hand.

“Now,” said the grim looking grain dealer, “you have something to say,
I presume, Jim?” and he looked at the superintendent.

“I say what I said before, Mr. Hammerly,” grumbled Mayberry. “If I
can’t have a free hand I can’t undertake to manage the concern, and
that’s all there is to it.”

“But you can continue as superintendent, I presume?” softly asked
Hammerly. “That job isn’t too big for you, is it?”

The younger man’s face flamed and he answered angrily: “I don’t know
what you mean. Nobody ever complained of my work before.”

“While Barton was on the job to overlook you--no,” admitted the old
man, his sarcasm biting. “True. But things have been going badly in the
various shops. That fire in Number Four the other day, for instance.”

“By thunder!” exploded Mayberry, “you can’t blame me for that! I can’t
be in a dozen places at once.”

“There have been quite unnecessary breakdowns, and work has been
retarded. How do you explain these things?” demanded Mr. Hammerly.

“I--I----”

“I don’t mean to say you are not a good man in your place, Jim,” said
the grain merchant. “But Barton’s job is too big for you. I did not
believe you could begin to fill his shoes at the start.”

“Yet you agreed that Barton should go away?” questioned Grandon Fuller.

“Yes. He wanted to go. For patriotic reasons I could not thwart his
desire. And in addition I knew that if Jim here fell down--as he
has--we would not be helpless.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Seville Baker, who owned a drug store
and had several thousand dollars invested in the Hapwood-Diller Company
stock.

Jim Mayberry’s face was fiery again. Even Grandon Fuller sat up to
stare at Hammerly. The others seemed as much amazed.

The old grain dealer grinned for a moment rather sheepishly. Then a new
expression came into his face, for he turned to look at the girl beside
him. His gnarled right hand crept over her white and well shaped left.
She glanced up from her book, startled.

“I tell you what ’tis,” said Hammerly in his homely way; “if I was as
blind as you other fellers are this board would be about as much good
as an old women’s sewing bee! That’s what!

“There’s been just one person that’s kept things going half smoothly
in the Hapwood-Diller Company since Frank Barton cleared out to be a
soldier. And that person had a good deal to do toward helping Frank
when he was on the job.

“Don’t you fellers know that Miss Clayton here was Frank’s right hand
man? She knows all the ins and outs of things. It was her caught this
poor fish, Jim Mayberry, selling us out to the Bogata Company. She’s
been of much more importance lately, I can tell you. If we pull out of
this hole we are in and pay a dividend again, it will be because of
what she has done.”

Grandon Fuller dragged himself to his feet. He had a power of
repression scarcely second to Hammerly himself. But this was too much.

“You old fool!” he shouted at the grain dealer. “You don’t mean to try
to put a woman in charge of this business? It’s suicidal!”

“I mean just that. I mean Miss Clayton’s able to fill the job, and Jim
Mayberry ain’t. She’s a better man when it comes to business sense than
any of us. I nominate her for the place of assistant manager, to hold
the job till Frank Barton comes back to us--if the poor feller ever
does come back.”

“I won’t vote on such a fool proposition,” cried Fuller wrathfully,
starting for the door.

“Don’t bother to, Grandon,” drawled Hammerly. “You’d be beat if you
did--and you know it. I’ve got more proxies than you have.”

[Illustration: “I nominate her as assistant manager, to hold the job
till Frank Barton comes back.”
                                                    (_See page 227_)]

The door of the board room banged. Ethel Clayton had turned to speak,
but Hammerly was scowling at Jim Mayberry, who had risen as though
to follow his fellow-conspirator. “Spit it out, Jim. Tell us what’s on
your chest.”

“I--I----You old fool!” exclaimed the superintendent, “do you think I
am going to work here under a _girl_? To be set aside for her?”

“No; I don’t guess you will,” responded Hammerly. “We’ll give you a
chance to resign if that’s what you want. And I guess your resignation
will be accepted pretty nigh unanimous.”

“But Mr. Hammerly,” begged Seville Baker, feebly, “what will happen to
the works? Mr. Mayberry has been superintendent so long----”

“There’s a good foreman in every shop who has been on his job longer
than Jim Mayberry has voted. They’ve only been hampered by Jim--that’s
the truth of the matter.”

“I will be through at the end of the month, gentlemen,” said Mayberry,
recovering his dignity. “The high hand Mr. Hammerly takes in this
matter----”

“Shoo!” exclaimed the grain merchant with grim pleasantry. “You’ll get
through right here and now. I for one wouldn’t trust you to go out into
the shops again. You go to Sydney and draw your salary to the end of
next month. You broke your contract when you accepted the assistant
managership and extra salary. Your dear friend, Fuller, or his legal
henchman, Schuster, didn’t point that out to you, did they? Sydney’s
got the money all in an envelope for you. Scat!” and he waved both
hands at the angry Mayberry.

“Now,” the old man added, turning to his conferees, “maybe you fellows
think I’ve taken a high hand in these proceedings; but to tell you
honestly, we ought to have both Mayberry and Grandon Fuller arrested.
Only it would have created a scandal that the Hapwood-Diller Company
couldn’t afford at this time.”

“We don’t want any scandal,” came from the corner of the room.

“We’ve had enough trouble as it is,” came from the other side of the
place.

“Let us get right down to a working basis--and let it go at that.”

“What we want to do is to pull up and make some money.”

At this last remark, Macon Hammerly turned to the speaker and smiled
grimly. Then he went on:

“There ain’t no use in denying that we’re in a bad hole. We’ve run
behind for two quarters, and our credit’s hurt by those stock sales.
It’s going to be a heavy burden upon this girl’s shoulders--as it was
upon Frank Barton’s--to pull us out. But she’ll do it! Won’t you,
Ethel?” he demanded heartily.

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly,” the girl murmured.

“Louder! Tell them ‘Yes,’” cried the grain merchant.

“I can only follow in Mr. Barton’s footsteps,” she stammered.

“And good enough!” declared Mr. Baker.

“If you can do half as well as Barton, Miss Clayton,” said another of
the revivified board, “we shall have no complaint.”

“We’ll be behind you, girl,” said Macon Hammerly. “Keep the wheels
turning, speed up the output, and watch the outgoes as well as the
incomes. That’s the secret of success in this business. And the Lord
help you!” he added under his breath, but the excited girl herself did
not hear his less jubilant tone.




CHAPTER XXII

THE FIGHT


With a reunited board behind her and canny Macon Hammerly to advise
with, it might seem at the rising of the curtain on Ethel Clayton’s
régime as _de facto_ manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing
Company that her course would be along pleasant paths.

Instead she very soon found that she was walking over burning
plowshares.

That Grandon Fuller was beaten in his control of the board of directors
did not make him amenable to the new policies of the Hapwood-Diller
Company and the reign of a girl as manager of the business.

He boldly stated that he considered the knell of the company had rung
because of the situation in the offices. If a full-grown man like Jim
Mayberry could not handle the business so as to make a profit, how
could a girl be expected to do so?

That Mr. Fuller’s intention was still to discourage the small
stockholders so that he could buy up their holdings at a low price and
finally control the corporation, could not be overlooked. Yet he was
careful to do nothing now that would give Hammerly a legal hold on him.

Mayberry was out of it, or so it seemed. He went to work for the
Mailsburg Addition Real Estate Company, of which Mr. Fuller was known
to be the backer. It was a good deal of a come-down for Jim Mayberry.

On that wonderful day when Hammerly had carried his point and had given
the welfare of the business into Ethel’s hands, the foremen of the
shops had been called in before the board and the situation explained
to them.

They were not asked to express their opinion of Jim Mayberry’s
oversight of the factory, nor to explain their own apparent
shortcomings and the failure of their several shops to keep up to the
standard of output established by Mr. Barton.

Merely they were asked if they would be loyal to the corporation, and
if they were willing to work in harmony with Ethel Clayton until such
time as a general superintendent could be found to take Mayberry’s
place. These questions brought enthusiastic and unanimous affirmative
responses.

But a willingness upon the part of all the hands was not all that was
needed. When a manufacturing plant, either in its mechanical part or in
its working force, has been allowed to deteriorate, it is uphill work
to get it back on a firm foundation.

Ethel felt that with the good teamwork of the office force which she
could depend upon, her burden at that end would be light. In the
factory administration lay her difficult problem.

She depended on Benway Chase in no inconsiderable degree, as she knew
he had gained a working knowledge of the factory affairs. Benway had
continued to make himself acquainted with practical things and much
shoplore. The foremen liked him, too, and would discuss things with the
young fellow that they might have been chary of talking over with “the
lady boss,” as they began to call her.

There was not an ounce of business jealousy in Ethel Clayton’s makeup.
She gave Benway all the encouragement possible, and after the first two
weeks she reported to the board that she could not possibly carry on
the work at all were it not for Benway, or somebody equally efficient
and willing in his stead.

Since the news of the air raid on the American camp in France, Benway
had been even gentler and more considerate of Ethel than before; but
there was, too, a certain aloofness in his manner which the girl quite
understood.

He had captured Ethel’s secret. His own love for her had given him an
immediate key to her emotion when she first saw the headlines spread
over the news sheet. Frank Barton’s peril had caused her to betray her
feeling for him to the love-sharpened vision of Benway.

Since that time no news save that he was still missing had come of
Frank Barton. It was well Ethel’s mind was so filled with business
matters and that her every waking hour was occupied by the affairs
of the Hapwood-Diller Company. She had no opportunity of dwelling
in thought upon that line in the casualty list that had not been
explained: “_Lieut. F. Barton, Field Artillery, missing_.”

When the clergyman prayed on Sunday for those who had gone “over there”
to fight in their country’s cause, Ethel thought of but one person.
It seemed to her as though the whole war--the fate of a worldwide
democracy--was as nothing compared to the mystery of what had happened
to Frank Barton.

She was not alone in this desire to know the fate of the general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company. Mrs. Trevor came more than once
to discuss the mystery with her. She began to learn how many friends
Frank Barton really had in Mailsburg. His cheerful, kindly spirit had
won him a following of which any man might feel proud.

Mr. Macon Hammerly had used his influence to make inquiry. But the War
Department, like most large bodies, moves slowly. The questions from
Lieutenant Barton’s friends were not the only fear-fraught queries that
must be answered.

Nobody in Mailsburg, it seemed, had heard from any of the town’s sons
who had gone to France when Barton went. The boys drafted from the town
were still in the training camps on this side of the water. As far as
Ethel could learn no one had heard directly from Morrison Copley or
Charles Bradley since that tragic happening.

Ethel’s pillow was often wet at night because of Frank Barton’s fate;
but by day the business difficulties that faced her held her mind in
thrall. She began to appreciate more than ever before what Barton
himself had gone through when he had first taken hold of the job of
putting the Hapwood-Diller Company on a paying basis.

And she had problems to solve that Barton had not been obliged to
consider. In two years and a half circumstances had greatly changed.
The labor situation was one of the hardest of Ethel’s enigmas.

Besides the hundred or more men who had been drafted from the shops,
and others who had enlisted, many of the best mechanics had gone away
to work in munition plants where the wages were vastly higher than the
Hapwood-Diller Company could afford to pay.

This had brought into the shops a class of workmen who were not, to
say the least, high grade. There was unrest among them, too. Having no
feeling of loyalty for the corporation, these new workmen were really a
menace to the peaceful conduct of the business.

Little troubles rose almost daily, many of which could not be settled
by the shop foremen. After all, the absence of a strong hand over the
factory as a whole, began to be felt. And Ethel realized this lack
quite as soon as anybody.

With the old hands she would have had some personal influence. With the
new workmen--many of them foreigners--she could do little.

Jim Mayberry was a burly man, and not afraid to “bawl a man out” if
occasion arose. If he threatened to knock a man down he looked as
though he could do it. That may not be the most approved way of keeping
a lot of unruly workmen in order; but it is often efficacious.

Benway Chase could merely be Ethel’s errand boy. Benway felt his
limitations keenly. “If I only had a good right arm!” he groaned more
than once.

“No use worrying about that, Bennie,” she said. “We must find some way
to manage besides knocking their heads together. There are only a few
who make trouble. Don’t you think we can get rid of them?”

But labor was so scarce and the factory was so crowded with orders that
she shrank from such a drastic course. She had an intuitive feeling,
too, that the discharge of certain trouble-makers would bring other
trouble-makers to the surface.

More than once she was stopped in front of the office or on her way
home by some worker grown bold by the changed condition of affairs.

“What about more wages, Miss?” one burly man asked her, quite
abruptly. “If wages don’t go up soon, I quit.”

“Everything is so high, my wife says I’ve got to earn more,” was what
a tall, thin workman told her right in front of her own home. And two
days later both of these men demanded their time and left.

“It sure is getting worse every day,” was the way Benway Chase put it.
“I don’t see how it’s going to end.”

“Maybe we’ll have to shut down,” Ethel answered.

“Oh, you don’t mean that!”

“No, I don’t. But there is no telling what will happen,” said the girl,
soberly.

She felt that poison was seeping into the working force from without.
Nothing she could say or do would stop it. The foremen admitted that
the tone of the shops had entirely changed. If they were able to get a
fair day’s work turned out they were doing well. And many of the men
did their stint grudgingly.

The wages of all the hands had been advanced twice since Frank Barton
had first taken hold of the corporation. Had business remained good and
profits increased, it had been his intention, Ethel knew, to ask the
board of directors for another advance at the end of the third year.

But with affairs in the mess they were--a quarterly dividend passed and
the output decreased--there would be no hope of following out this
intention of the absent general manager.

Many factories in neighboring towns had turned to war work of one kind
or another. But the machinery of the Hapwood-Diller Company, built for
special need, could not be used on any war work that Ethel had ever yet
heard of.

The factory of the defunct Bogata Company was being used for munition
work. People from Mailsburg were flocking to Norville, attracted by the
high wages. One by one the Hapwood-Diller Company’s best workmen left
and went to work at the Norville plant.

Ethel’s report to the board was sure to be a report of failure. She
realized that she did not measure up to the demands of her position. To
claim she was helpless would not absolve her from the fact she was a
failure. That could not be cloaked.

This was her job. She had accepted it. If she could not make good she
should give it up. She began to feel that Ethel Clayton might be a good
enough hack; but she lacked the ability necessary to carry her to the
front in the business race. She was away back in the ruck.

These were her feelings and meditations one evening when, after the
others had gone, she still remained in the office, as she often did.

Her work for the day was done. Hours of consideration, it seemed, would
not aid her in making the figures on the credit side of the ledger add
up to a larger sum than the figures on the debit side.

She stood with her back to her desk, hands gripping its edge, her eyes
emptily staring at the wall. Her mental vision was alert, not her
physical.

If Frank Barton could only return! If he would only walk in at that
door--just to advise with her, to hearten her, to suggest to her
agitated mind some scheme by which she might put life into this
business.

Would she ever see him again now that he had marched away? Her mind
pictured the marching past of that host of high-hearted men and boys,
bound for a foreign shore from which many necessarily would never
return. And it seemed Frank Barton was one of the very first to be lost
to the knowledge of his friends--lost to those who loved him!

The outer door banged open heavily. She knew John Murphy had not yet
gone home, and she looked up expecting to see his grizzled visage.

Instead it was the sharp and eager features of Mabel Skinner. The
younger girl came in like a whirlwind.

“Oh, Ethel! Miss Clayton!” she gasped. “Guess!”

“Guess what?”

“Guess what I just heard down at Rhyncamp’s store! That Marble girl was
there! You know--the Marbles who live right next to the Fuller house.”

“I know. What of it?” asked Ethel, excited, though she did not know why
she should be.

“She’s chums with that Fuller girl. You know--Grandon Fuller’s daughter
Helen. She went to France to join the Red Cross.”

Ethel’s clasped hands showed her interest. She could not speak. Her
eyes searched the vivid face of Little Skinner pleadingly.

“The Marble girl’s just got a letter from Helen Fuller. I heard her
tell Mr. Rhyncamp. Miss Fuller is nursing in a hospital over there
somewhere. She says her very first patient was Mr. Barton. He ain’t
dead, then, Miss Clayton! He ain’t dead! He’s only wounded! Oh, Miss
Clayton!”




CHAPTER XXIII

COMPARISONS


Mabel Skinner’s news was true. The letter Miss Marble had received told
the story from Helen Fuller’s standpoint. But let the heroics in it be
the nine days’ wonder of Mailsburg. Here are the facts:

Frank Barton came to his senses slowly and found himself upon a cot,
one of a long line, in a ward of the base hospital at Lovin, as the
place may be called, without the first idea of how he got there. His
last memory was of facing the crew of the German air-raider with Helen
Fuller clinging to his arm and making it impossible to defend her or
himself or to deal effectively with the enemy before them.

“Where--where am I?” he stammered. “What happened?”

“Oh, Frank!” squealed a voice, and some one in correct nurse’s garb
stood beside him. “You’re not going to die, are you? Isn’t that just
_dear_!”

“Oh, heavens!” groaned Lieutenant Barton, in something like despair.
“_You_ here?”

Were Frank Barton’s eyes at last seeing truly? It was, perhaps, the
most impolite speech he had ever made. But he was very weak and still a
little lightheaded.

Had the quiet-faced French matron of the ward understood much English,
she surely would have removed Miss Fuller from attendance on the
lieutenant almost at once. As it was he had to listen to the girl’s
fulsome praises and silly ejaculations.

It was not until some time later that Barton learned just what had
happened after he had been hit with the sharp stone and had handed his
weapon to the distracted Helen.

“Why, that Heinie used to pitch in one of the bush leagues,” Morrison
Copley told Barton, when he came to see his lieutenant. “Lived ten
years in America and then went back to fight for Kultur. Something’s
going to happen to him, for the lieutenant in command of the airship
declares all bets off. He had warned his men not to fight.”

“I wonder what they had in their mind when they started for me. Going
to kiss me, I suppose,” Barton suggested weakly.

“Bah jove! that’s a good one,” said Morry. “I must tell that to Brad.
Say, that lad got ‘mention’ in general orders for capturing the gang.
But he walks right up to the colonel, and says: ‘Colonel, it wasn’t
much to capture fourteen men that were not armed. How about Lieutenant
Barton who tackled them single handed and perhaps helped bring the old
Zep down anyway?’”

“That’s all right,” commented Barton. “Good of Bradley. But, really, I
did no more than another man would have done. Those poor people in the
car that were blown to bits----”

“And it was a car that followed on behind that one that picked you and
Mam’zelle Hélène up,” grinned Morry, “and brought you cross country to
Lovin. That’s how you were lost trace of. Guess the folks at home must
think you evaporated into thin air, Lieutenant. But they’ll know the
truth very soon now. I’ve written home about you.”

But that was not entirely satisfactory to Frank Barton. He wanted to
write himself. He had a strong and particular reason for writing, and
to a particular girl.

Aside from the wound in his head--a wound which would always leave a
scar--his right arm was strapped tightly to his side. He had a fracture
of the shoulder that made a cast necessary and would entail a long
convalescence. Frank Barton’s active military career was halted before
it was much more than begun.

The delayed report of his wounds did not officially reach Mailsburg
until after both Helen’s letter to Miss Marble and Morrison Copley’s
“open letter” to the Mailsburg _Clarion_ were received. Barton was the
first of the town’s boys reported under fire and the first to suffer
injury in the war.

A delayed letter from Ethel had reached Barton soon after he found
himself established in the hospital ward with Helen Fuller hovering
about him a good part of every day.

“Business, I suppose, Frank?” she observed when she saw the name and
address on the back of the envelope. “_Can’t_ those factory people let
you alone, you poor dear boy, even when you are _wounded_ so?”

Barton felt like speaking impolitely again. But he had command of
himself now. Nevertheless Helen continued to rasp his nerves on more
than one subject. Had he been blessed with another nurse he would
have dictated an answer to Ethel’s letter. There was a tone to it--a
wistfulness which the girl had been unable to hide--that deeply moved
the wounded lieutenant.

The missive was written before Ethel had been made assistant manager of
the Hapwood-Diller Company; yet even then she felt the burden of her
position and would have been glad of any bit of kindly advice he might
have sent her. But for three weeks, at least, he must remain silent. He
had never learned to write with his left hand like Benway Chase.

He proved to be a patient _blessé_, and both the physicians and
nurses praised him. That he had come to a French hospital was rather
unfortunate, for Barton’s knowledge of French was slight. He had to
make most of his desires known through Helen and therefore was at a
disadvantage.

She frankly encouraged the appearance of a closer association between
them than was the case. A few months before Frank Barton would have
been delighted at such intimacy with Helen Fuller. But he was quite
aware now of her shortcomings.

Even her association with the Red Cross was a play. It was a part of
her unquenchable desire to show off all the time. Had Barton been
really left to her small mercies he realized that it would have gone
hard with him. She kept her interest in him as a patient only because
of the romance of their adventure together at the time of the air raid.

He could not forget how small and light a part she had played at that
time. He hoped that no other American girl in France would prove
herself so great a coward as Helen Fuller had on that momentous
occasion.

He began to feel a distaste for her glowing beauty--a beauty of
coloring and feature and texture of skin and hair only, without
character or intelligence looking out of the eyes or showing in the
face.

In the warmth of the first few days of their sojourn at the hospital
even so modest a man as Frank Barton saw plainly that he was being
given the opportunity to declare himself. Helen was waiting for him to
respond to her advances.

When he did not respond she began finally to be piqued, then angry. She
had herself transferred to another ward. Her absence did not increase
Barton’s temperature, the chart at the head of his cot remained normal.

This rift between them was noted and remarked on by some of the other
nurses. At last Helen took offence, had her mother telegraph her from
Paris, and obtained a furlough and departed from Lovin without bidding
Frank good-bye.

He did not miss her, save in a relieved way. He had compared her with
another girl--another of whom he had never thought before as other than
a business associate--and found that Helen Fuller was dwarfed in the
comparison.

Thinking of Ethel as he lay in his hospital cot, he was amazed to
discover how much that was really worth while he knew about her.
Important things, too--individualities and phases of character that now
revealed Ethel Clayton as a girl eminently worthy of consideration.

The girl he had left behind was all that Helen Fuller proved not to
be. He was confident that Ethel would not have shown the white feather
as Helen had at the time of the German air raid. No girl who had so
courageously taken up the additional burden of responsibility in the
Hapwood-Diller Company offices could be a coward in any particular.

The vision of Ethel Clayton grew in his mind. His thoughts centered
about her. He began to wonder what her attitude would be toward him if
he should go back home and see her again.

It was not interest in the Hapwood-Diller Company that was drawing
his heart to Mailsburg during these days. He did not give a fig for
business. His heartstrings were attuned to a much tenderer emotion. He
was gradually beginning to see things in their proper light.




CHAPTER XXIV

OPENING THE WAY


Ethel heard of Barton in several ways during the next few weeks, but
never by personal letter. She understood the reason for that, however,
for Morrison Copley had quite freely explained the lieutenant’s wounds
and his helpless condition in the _Clarion_.

“Thank the good Lord ’tain’t his legs nor his eyes,” Mrs. Trevor said.
“When a man can’t see to read and he can’t get about on his own pins he
ain’t no use to himself, nor to nobody else.”

Ethel did not fail to write to the wounded man, and that frequently.
When these letters should reach Barton he would learn the particulars
of the important changes in the Hapwood-Diller offices, and something,
too, of Ethel’s troubles and perplexities.

But she had no idea that it was something entirely different from
office news that the hungry-hearted absentee wished for.

The explanation of the mystery touching Frank Barton’s wounds and his
confinement in the hospital relieved Ethel’s anxiety to a certain
degree. But there was one thing that seriously pricked her thought at
all times. Helen Fuller was with the wounded man!

Miss Marble had made Helen’s letter broadly public. Other people in
Mailsburg noted the fact that Helen’s first patient was the general
manager of the Hapwood-Diller Company. It is the easiest thing in the
world for gossip to put such a two and two together and make four.

It was remarked that before Barton had gone to the officers’ training
camp at Quehasset he had been seen much with Helen Fuller. His interest
in her had been noted.

Now the gossips declared their association on the other side could
lead to but one conclusion. Somebody offered a bet in Ethel’s hearing,
two to one, that there would be a wedding at the American Embassy in
Paris just as soon as Lieutenant Barton was allowed to leave the base
hospital at Lovin.

However, relieved by her knowledge of Barton’s safety, Ethel Clayton
tried to give all her attention to the task she had accepted when she
was practically hoisted into Barton’s place.

Hammerly and a few of the other directors cheered her; Grandon Fuller
sneered and continued to acclaim openly that a girl at the head of the
business spelled ruin for the Hapwood-Diller Company.

“Don’t mind that grouch, Ethel,” Macon Hammerly said. “We’ve put a ring
in his nose, and like any other hog he squeals over the operation. But
such squealing never yet did any hurt.”

“It gets on one’s nerves most awfully, just the same, Mr. Hammerly,”
the girl said with a sigh.

She had not, however, come to the old man with any empty complaint. The
labor situation at the factory was in a critical condition. The spoiled
work being turned back by the inspectors and foremen had increased
twenty per cent. Still the malcontents complained of low wages.

“To protect the corporation and to answer the low wage complaint,”
Ethel told Hammerly, “I have certain drastic changes to suggest. I
admit they are diametrically opposed to the system inaugurated by Mr.
Barton; but Mr. Barton did not have the same difficulties to deal with
that we have now.”

“Ain’t it so?” agreed the old man. “In those times, Grandon Fuller was
trying to rope Frank, just as he afterward noosed Mayberry. Go on,
Ethel. You’ve got good sense, I know.”

“Thank you. At least, I have the interests of the corporation at heart.
If I fail as manager I lose more than your good opinion, Mr. Hammerly.”

“By Henry! you ain’t goin’ to fail, girl,” cried the man.

“But I am desperate. Desperate enough to change the entire system of
the factory if the board of directors will back me. Look at this, Mr.
Hammerly.”

She displayed her carefully drawn up plans. The important change
was the shifting from a flat payment of labor at so much per hour,
graduated according to the skill of the workmen, to a piecework scale
of wages which she had scheduled with the assistance of Benway Chase.

“I believe it will answer the complaint of low pay. Our best men will
be encouraged to remain with us instead of going to the munition
factories. The dissatisfied workmen will be those less skilled and we
can the more easily replace them if they leave,” Ethel explained.

Macon Hammerly’s approval was instant, and with his backing Ethel’s
scheme was sure to be agreed to by the board. But to put it into force
without opposition was more than could be expected.

The better class of workmen in the factory when consulted quietly
before the posting of the notices, were eager to give the plan a trial.
Many of them owned their own homes in Mailsburg and had hesitated
to leave their employment at the Hapwood-Diller factory despite
the temptation of higher wages elsewhere. The chance to increase
voluntarily their incomes by speeding up found favor.

There were incendiary fellows, however, ready instantly to decry the
change. They could see no good in it. It was a trick on the part of the
corporation to underpay the bulk of the laboring force employed in the
factory.

This cauldron of trouble continued to bubble and steam up to the
very Saturday before the installation of the new system of payment.
At closing time that afternoon it was already dark; but many of the
workmen left the factory gate only to remain in the side street where
they milled like cattle on the verge of a stampede. They talked in
noisy groups. There was something on foot and whether or not they knew
just what it was to be, both the satisfied workmen and the dissatisfied
remained.

An automobile with two sputtering gasoline torches in it appeared at
last and drove slowly through the noisy crowd to the corner, where it
stopped in view of both the door of the factory offices and of the
workmen’s entrance gate. A burly figure in a greatcoat and goggles was
behind the steering wheel of the car. In the tonneau was a little,
black-haired, foreign looking man who stood on the seat to speak to the
crowd that at once surged near.

“That is Mr. Schuster!” Ethel Clayton ejaculated, looking from the
office window that best overlooked the corner. She had remained after
the bulk of the office force had gone; but Mabel Skinner was with her.

“I don’t know who that one may be,” said the younger girl, “but it’s
Jim Mayberry’s car and that’s Jim himself all camouflaged up with
goggles and a long coat. Let’s go down there, Miss Clayton, and listen
to what that crazy man’s saying. He waves his arms around like they
was unhinged--just the same as his brain is.”

The girls were about to leave the offices in John’s care when the
street-corner forum convened. Ethel was worried.

“Is the side gate locked, John?” she asked the porter.

“I don’t s’pose it is yet, ma’am,” he replied.

“Go out and bar it and warn the night watchmen to be on their guard.
Nobody must be allowed to enter the gate to-night--not even a foreman
if one should return. And be sure the main door is locked after us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” grinned John. “And will you call out the military?”

Ethel feared, however, that it might be no laughing matter. Mabel
Skinner was eager to go to the corner and hear what the man had to say;
Ethel accompanied her, fearing the sharp tongue of the younger girl
would get her into trouble in the rough crowd.

Schuster was Mr. Grandon Fuller’s personal representative, Ethel was
sure. And Jim Mayberry’s presence made certain the identity of the
influence which was seeking to stir up trouble for the Hapwood-Diller
Company and its girl manager.

Jim Mayberry caught sight of Ethel almost as soon as the two girls
reached the corner. He turned and called Schuster’s attention to Ethel.
The fox-featured little lawyer instantly seized the opportunity for
making a point in his speech.

“Here you are, men! You fellows under petticoat government! Here’s your
lady boss come out to laugh at you. You big, brawny, husky fellows
ought to be proud of yourselves--bossed by a girl! Tied to her apron
strings!”

He added something more vulgar that drew a laugh from a certain portion
of the throng. Jim Mayberry turned and pushed up his dust goggles,
leering into Ethel’s white and disgusted face. Mabel Skinner quite lost
her self-control.

“You’re in nice work now, ain’t you, Jim Mayberry?” she scoffed at the
former superintendent of the factory. Then she screamed at the crowding
men: “You big galoots! You goin’ to let that little fice up there
insult a lady like Miss Clayton? And don’t you see who’s egging him
on--and egging _you_ on to riot and trouble? He’s asking you to pull
his chestnuts out of the fire. It’s Jim Mayberry--Mayberry, the man
that’s sore because the board kicked him out as superintendent and put
Miss Clayton into his place. Aw, say! You all know Jim Mayberry!”

This raised a laugh which drowned out the lawyer’s vitriolic words.
Mayberry reached for Little Skinner, his face inflamed and ugly.

“You brat!” he growled. “I’ll teach you----”

He did not finish the remark. As his clutching hand descended upon
the girl’s shoulder a figure jumped upon the running board of the
automobile on the other side.

“Beating up a girl would be about your size, Jim Mayberry!” exclaimed
Benway Chase, and with all the force of his good left arm he struck the
former superintendent of the factory in the face.

Mayberry uttered an oath and swung around. Benway met him with a second
blow--this time landing on the nose. In a moment the victim’s face was
covered with blood.

“Go it, Bennie! Hit him again!” shrieked Mabel, jumping up and down in
her excitement.

Ethel was horrified; but Little Skinner became the primitive woman
cheering on her particular hero.

Mayberry got up from behind the steering wheel and cast himself blindly
upon the striking Benway. The latter gave ground, leaping back off the
car. Mayberry plunged after him. In a moment they had clinched and were
down in the street, striking at each other, Benway silent but Mayberry
swearing and threatening.

It was at this moment that Macon Hammerly appeared with a policeman.
The latter refused to observe the incipient riot around the two men on
the ground, but stepped up and tapped Schuster on the arm.

“Hey, you!” he said to the little lawyer, “where’s your permit?”

“‘Permit?’”

“Permit to speak on the street ’cordin’ to the city ord’nance made an’
pervided. Ain’t got none?” went on the officer. “Come along with me,
then,” and he jerked Schuster off the automobile seat as though he were
a child and started at once down town with him.

“I reckon,” Hammerly said to Ethel with a grin, “that Grandon forgot
that small point. There almost always is some vital point, Ethel, that
a villain overlooks.

“Now, you come on with me, girl. There’s something I want you to be in
on. I was coming up after you when I saw this gang here and sicked the
policeman on to that little Schuster. Come on.”

The whirl of events had quite taken Ethel’s mind off of Benway Chase
and his fight with Mayberry. But Mabel Skinner had darted around the
car, vitally determined to lend her hero aid if he needed it.

Benway needed no help. Had it been so, there seemed to be quite a
number in the crowd disposed to be his friends.

“Let the young boss alone,” one said. “It ain’t beef that counts. The
young boss has got the spirit to lick his weight in wildcats.”

“Oh, Bennie! Oh, Bennie!” burst forth Mabel Skinner. “Don’t you let
that big loafer hurt you!”

“I won’t,” promised Benway, rising quite self-possessed and scarcely
marred by the scrimmage. “He doesn’t want to fight.”

This seemed quite true. At least, Jim Mayberry had very quickly got
enough. He stood up painfully, climbed into his car awkwardly, and
drove away, amid the jeers of the onlookers, without even an additional
threat.

The bubble of his reputation as a fighter was pricked. Some of
the older workmen lingering near mentioned the fact that the
ex-superintendent of the factory had been but a bag of wind after all.
“The young boss,” as they had come to call Benway Chase, had “licked
him with one hand.”

The latter slipped out of the crowd as quickly as possible. Mabel
Skinner was clinging to his good arm and it was not until they were
a full dark block away from the scene of the disturbance that he
discovered the girl was crying.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Benway, utterly aghast at the
idea of self-possessed Little Skinner giving way to tears. “Are you
hurt?”

“No--no, sir, Mr. Chase. I ain’t hurt.”

“Then why are you crying?” he demanded, snuggling the girl closer to
his side.

“I--I was afraid you might be,” she confessed.

“But, I’m not! That big chump never hurt me a mite!”

“Then I--I guess I’m crying for joy,” sobbed Mabel. “If he’d hurt you,
Mr. Chase, I guess I’d have _died_!”

“Huh! Why the ‘Mr. Chase?’ Wasn’t I ‘Bennie’ a while back when you were
rooting for me? Why, Mabel, I couldn’t have lost out with you yelling
your head off that way on the side lines!”

“Oh, Bennie!” she gasped.

It was a very dark corner. When they strolled out into the next circle
of lamp light, Benway’s arm was around the girl’s shoulders and she was
looking up into his face with such an ecstatic expression on her own
that had Boots Skinner seen it he certainly would have been held fast
in his tracks.




CHAPTER XXV

COMPENSATION


Macon Hammerly offered no explanation at all as he led Ethel in the
direction of High Street, quite in the opposite way from her usual walk
at this hour of the evening. But he was pleasantly chatty just the same.

In spite of his gruffness and homely speech, if he liked the grain
dealer could show a less prickly side to his character, and he always
showed that glossed side to Ethel Clayton.

“Don’t you make no mistake, girl,” he now observed. “Your plan is going
to have a fair trial, and we’ll have no such riot scene staged again as
that to-night. Maybe I ain’t got all the political influence Grandon
Fuller blows about; but I’ve got him about sewed up in a bag and he
ain’t going to trouble you--he nor his hirelings--much more.

“He was trying to pull the wool over Barton’s eyes when Barton went
away, I believe. I trusted to Frank’s natural horse sense to keep him
out of any scrape with Grandon. But they do say he’s gone and fallen
for that flibbertigibbet daughter of the Fullers. I expect those nurses
have a great advantage over a man. Like enough every one of ’em’ll be
married to some poor sinner before this war’s over,” and he grinned.

“Oh, Mr. Hammerly!” Ethel gasped. “Maybe I’d better go as a nurse,” she
added, smiling.

“_You?_ Shucks! There ain’t no need for you to fish. The fellers will
all be after you. I’m going to live ten years longer and dandle two or
three of your babies on my knee. Come on! Here’s where we turn in.”

He led her into the law office of Alfred Gainor. The attorney had a
visitor who rose hastily to go when Hammerly, with Ethel behind him,
entered the private office.

“No, don’t run away, Grandon,” said the grain merchant in his very
harshest tone. “I told Gainor to get you here for just this purpose.”

“What do you mean, Hammerly?” growled the other. “I have nothing to say
to you at present.”

“No, I don’t expect you have. But I’ve got something to say to you, and
you’d best listen.”

“If you’ve come to me to plead for my favor on this girl’s behalf----”

“Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!” reiterated Hammerly. “There
won’t be no pleading on our side, I assure you, Grandon. And Ethel’s
here because she’s got a vital interest in what’s going to be done.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You will,” observed Hammerly grimly.

“What do you expect to interest me in, man?” demanded Grandon Fuller
with a less ruffled demeanor.

“I’m going to interest you in two or three things, Grandon,” said
the old man composedly, while the lawyer looked on as though he
quite understood. “I’m going to interest you first of all in the
specification sheet of the Kimberly Binding Company order. And then I’m
going to link that up with a much more important paper that you ain’t
seen for ten years, but that’s been on file here all that time since it
was probated and recorded. I mean Israel Diller’s will.”

At this statement Grandon Fuller leaped to his feet and advanced upon
the old grain merchant with inflamed countenance.

“What do you mean, you hoary-headed old scoundrel?” he shouted. “Do you
mean to tell me----”

He halted, licked his thick lips, and his flabby pomposity began to
shrink. Hammerly nodded.

“That’s it. Give a calf rope enough and it’ll hang itself. I could sit
here and bandy words with you long enough to make you give yourself
clean away. For you ain’t a very brainy villain. Otherwise you wouldn’t
have used a trick the second time that served you once--and that you
had got away with, it seemed, without raising suspicion.”

“I don’t understand you,” snarled Fuller. “What are you talking about
anyway?”

“I’m talking about forgery, Grandon--forgery and substitution. The
chemists and handwriting experts are not alone able to swear to changes
made on that Kimberly schedule; they will swear to changes made in the
same way--and by the same hand--in Israel Diller’s will!

“Sit down, Grandon! Don’t fall down,” advised Hammerly. “Mr. Mestinger,
who drew Israel’s will, being dead, you substitute your wife’s name for
that of Lorreta Clayton’s all through that instrument and made Niece
Mehitable instead of Niece Lorreta, the principal legatee under the
will.

“I always had suspicions, but no proof. Not till Ethel, here, showed me
that Kimberly company schedule and pointed out what that boy, Benway
Chase, first saw in it.

“You’re caught, Grandon! You’re caught just as hard and fast as I
caught Boots Skinner the other night setting hooks in the creek
against the law. I’m going to let Boots go this time, for he ain’t
an all around bad boy. Boots’ testimony is all I needed to link up
your principal henchman with your blackguarding of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. Jim Mayberry’s a proved scoundrel as far back as that Bogata
Company matter, and I’m going to run him out of town.

“What I do with you, Grandon, depends entirely on how much restitution
you are willing to make to the Widow Clayton and her daughter here.
If we go to law about this it will cost a lot of money--and a lot of
scandal. You’ve made a heap of money one way and another since you got
those shares of the Hapwood-Diller Company that was meant for Mrs.
Clayton. I’ll give you a chance.

“You’ll give those shares your wife got from the Israel Diller estate
to Mrs. Clayton, with dividends and accrued interest to date. You’ll
sell all your other holdings of the corporation’s shares to me, _and at
the low price which you’ve hammered them down to_!”

“W--What! Never!” groaned Grandon Fuller.

“That will automatically put you out of the Hapwood-Diller Company’s
affairs,” went on Macon Hammerly, not heeding the interruption. “And
I guess that will help some; eh, Ethel?” he continued, turning to the
much interested girl.

“Oh, is it true? Did he tamper with that will?” cried the girl.

“He did.”

“It’s false! I never----”

“Don’t try to deny it, Grandon. It’s true.” The old grain merchant
strode forward and towered sternly over the other man. “Come, what is
it to be, a peaceful settlement or war?”

“Gi--give me time to--to think.”

“Time to play another trick, you mean. No, you’ve got to decide now, at
once, right here.”

“You--you are hard. I can explain----”

“No explanation is necessary. I’ve got you just where I want you. Will
you settle or not?”

Grandon Fuller arose to his feet. He was panting hard.

“I won’t do it!” he began and then he shrank back before the steady
gaze of Hammerly and Ethel. “I--I--” He suddenly dropped into his
seat, his face a stricken gray. “Well, have your own way,” he mumbled.
“You’ve got me cornered.”




CHAPTER XXVI

HIS AWAKENING


One evening, some weeks later, Ethel found herself alone in the office.
It was after working hours and the others had gone home. She had still
to work late at times; but her plan of wage payment was already proving
successful.

There was a new spirit in the shops. Some of the old help were coming
back for safety, and the possibility of an increased income with the
Hapwood-Diller Company looked better to the married men, at least, than
a bulky pay envelope and the danger of sudden death.

In fact, for several weeks, since Grandon Fuller had been eliminated
from the affairs of the corporation, Ethel had been able to prove her
worth to the board of directors. The business was running smoothly. The
girl had proved that sex was not an insuperable barrier in the conduct
of such a complicated business as this of which she had charge.

With the help of Benway Chase, who had been advanced to a minor
governing position in the factory, Ethel was making good. She thought
of this cheerfully on this evening as she turned to snap out the
electric light above her desk, the last thing before going out.

Her hand was stayed by the quiet opening of the office door. In the
half-shadow of the entrance stood a tall figure, the face of which she
could not see. Nor did she see but one hand when the visitor advanced
into the room and closed the door. Was it a man with only one arm?

Then she saw that the right arm was bandaged to his side by a black
silk scarf. He was in uniform.

“Mr. Barton!”

“Ethel!”

She was half way to him on flying feet when she realized what he had
called her and how he had spoken. She halted.

“Mr. Barton! How you startled me! How glad I am to see you!” she
declared. “When did you arrive?”

“Just now. You are the first person I have seen to speak to in
Mailsburg,” he said, and strode forward to greet her.

“Your poor arm!” she murmured when she took his offered left hand. Then
she looked up and saw the grim scar on his brow. It gave an entirely
different expression to his countenance. Indeed he seemed to be an
entirely different man from the Frank Barton of old. He clung to her
hand.

“You--are you back for good? We have needed you so! Now I can give the
Hapwood-Diller Company back into your hands,” she said.

“I am afraid not yet,” Frank Barton replied gently. “I have only a
short furlough--till my shoulder completely heals. I came across hoping
to be of some small help in recruiting or in Red Cross work while I am
debarred from more active service.”

“Oh, Mr. Barton! you will not really go back again?” she cried, looking
down at her hand still crushed within his own.

“Unless the war ends very soon,” he laughed. “I know that you have
been more than successful in my job. Mr. Hammerly wrote me all about
Jim Mayberry and Grandon Fuller. I would not have believed it of Jim.
You have had a hard fight here, Ethel; but you have overcome, you have
succeeded.”

She did not seek to draw away her hand, but still looked down, refusing
to meet his gaze.

“How did you leave the other Mailsburg boys? Mr. Copley, for instance?”

“Fine!” he declared heartily.

“And Miss Fuller?”

“She and her mother returned on the _Lorraine_ with me. They were
called home, it seems, by Mr. Fuller’s business troubles. They have
lost money, they tell me, and will have to give up their big house on
the Hill.”

“But that makes no difference to _you_, of course, Mr. Barton?”

“Not the least,” he returned composedly. “I am afraid I shall never
become a favorite of Miss Fuller’s. I could not stand petting while I
was in the hospital at Lovin, and it rather piqued my nurse.”

Ethel looked up at him quickly. There was that in his eyes she had
never seen before. It held her gaze captive.

His single good hand released her hand. But gently he drew her toward
him, his hand behind her shoulder. Her form yielded hesitatingly to his
urging.

“I cannot claim that patriotism brought me back for these few weeks
that I may remain, Ethel,” he went on in a voice that suddenly became
strangely husky. “I wanted to see you--face to face.”

There was an awkward pause. She felt his hand on her shoulder tremble.

“I can’t understand why it is that I never saw you in just the same
light that I have since I’ve been away. But you have been in my
thoughts continually--the girl I left behind!”

“Oh, of course--the business--” she began flutteringly.

“No, it wasn’t the business, Ethel. It was you!” he cried.

“Me?” Her breast began to heave and her face glowed. He bent low that
he might catch her eyes.

[Illustration: “You have been in my thoughts continually--the girl I
left behind.”
                                                   (_See page 268_)]

“Yes, you! I guess I was asleep, but I’m awake now. We were so close
day after day--and I was so wrapped up in business--that I didn’t
realize how much you really meant to me.”

“Oh!” It was the faintest kind of an exclamation. She wanted to speak,
but for once the “perfectly capable person” could not say a word. Her
heart was pounding.

“But it came to me all of a sudden, while I was in the hospital and
while that very fluttery Helen Fuller was trying to wait on me. Then I
realized what a big difference there was in girls--and I realized that
you were the only girl in the world for me--the only one!”

Again there was a silence. But now she raised her eyes to meet his and
they were full of glorious tenderness. He clutched her close to him
with his one good arm.

“I love you--oh, how I love you!” he murmured. “How I love you!”

“Oh, Mr. Bar----”

“Ethel!”

“Frank, then.”

She spoke his name with such sweetness that it almost overpowered him.
It was as if she had suddenly lifted the veil and was letting him look
into her very soul. He still held her close. Now he suddenly kissed
her, once, twice and again.

“Thank God!” he said reverently. “Thank God!”

In her soul she also thanked God for His goodness in bringing this
man to her. But she could not speak. She could only cling tightly to
him--and for a long while he felt her heart beating close to his own.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Trevor sat in a front seat in her shabby little hat and Paisley
shawl and frankly cried outright during the ceremony.

“But they’ll make a grand couple,” she sobbed. “A grand couple--both of
’em so smart!”

Macon Hammerly occupied a seat further back. He sat with an expression
of grim pride on his face, as though he considered himself in some way
the father of this little romance.

“My young folks--both of ’em,” he whispered to a neighbor. “Sweetest
gal in the world, barrin’ none--an’ a fine fellow, too, believe me!”

Mrs. Clayton was there, of course, dressed in the best she had ever
possessed. She felt like weeping, but she did not, for was she not a
Diller, and had she not a family pride to maintain? Especially now,
when their financial affairs were so greatly changed?

“Not that I do not consider Mr. Barton a very fine man,” she confessed.
“But I feel that Ethel might do so much better in a social way if she
would only try. And really a soldier under orders has no right to
marry--especially when he has to go away so soon. Worst of all, Ethel
insists upon retaining her position as manager of the Hapwood-Diller
Company. Well, now that we have such a large amount in the business
perhaps that is as well. The shares are already at par again.”

Benway Chase was there too and sat close beside Mabel Skinner--a new
Mabel, full of ambition and who no longer chewed gum.

“Some day we’ll do it too, Mabel,” he whispered.

“Oh, you go on!” she answered, but looked immensely pleased
nevertheless.

The organ pealed forth and slowly the procession moved down the aisle
of the church, the bride leaning lightly on the groom’s good arm. They
came out into the sunshine of the late winter day and both Ethel in her
veil and Barton in his khaki were glorified by it. The automobile that
was to take them to the Clayton home was in readiness and they entered
it.

“Mine--mine at last!” he breathed, when they were safe from the eyes of
the curious crowd.

“It’s like a dream--it doesn’t seem real!” she murmured, with eyes that
spoke volumes as she beamed on him.

“Only a week before I have to go to the front again!” he groaned.

“Let’s not think about that, Frank--let’s think only about how happy we
are.”

“Just as you say, Ethel.” He drew her closer, glanced hastily around
to make sure they were not observed, and kissed her. “Wonderful, this
getting married, isn’t it? Beats business all hollow!” And he smiled.

She looked at him fondly, and suddenly a mischievous dimple showed in
each cheek. “Well, I don’t know. If you have a perfectly capable person
for an assis----”

“Ethel! You’ve sprung that on me twice since we became engaged! Now as
my wife you’ve got to cut it out.”

“What? Cut out being capable? And yet remain manager while you are
away?” And then, as she saw he was really hurt she added swiftly and
tenderly: “Forgive me, Frank, that’s a dear! I’m so happy--so furiously
happy--I don’t know what I am saying or doing!”

He held her as close as he dared in such a public place. “Mine! mine!
mine!” he murmured over and over again.

Very softly she patted the free hand of the wounded arm. Then she
suddenly pressed it to her lips and kissed it.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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