Although he was learning to like the store as a community of human beings its business was as the works of a watch, when all he knew was how to tell the time by the face.  But he tried hard to learn; tried until his head was dizzy with a whirl of dissociated facts, which he knew ought to be associated, and under the call of his utter restlessness would disappear altogether for two or three days.

“Relieving the pressure!  It’s a safety-valve so I shan’t blow up,” he explained to his father, sadly.

“Take your time,” said John Wingfield, Sr., having in mind a recent talk with Dr. Bennington.

Jack listened faithfully to his father’s clear-cut lessons.  He asked questions which only made his father sigh; for they had little to do with the economy of working costs.  All his suggestions were extravagant; they would contribute to the joy of the employees, but not to profit.  And other questions made his father frown in devising answers which were in the nature of explanations.  Born of his rambling and humanly observant relations with every department, they led into the very heart of things in that mighty organization.  There were times when it was hard for him to control his indignation.  There were trails leading to the room with the glass-paneled door marked “Private” which he half feared to pursue.

Thus, between father and son remained that indefinable chasm of thought and habit which filial duty or politeness could not bridge.  No stories of the desert were ever told at home, though it was so easy to tell them to Burleigh or Mathewson, those contrasts in a pale fitter of clothes and a herculean rustler of dry-goods boxes.  But echoes of the tales came to the father through his assistants.  He had the feeling of some stranger spirit in his own likeness moving there in the streets of his city under the talisman of a consanguinity that was nominal.  One day he put an inquiry to the general manager concretely, though in a way to avoid the appearance of asking another’s opinion about his own son.

“He has your gift of winning men to him.  There is no denying his popularity with the force,” said the general manager, who was a diplomat.

The same question was put to Peter Mortimer.

“We all love him.  I think a lot of people in the store would march out to the desert after him,” said Mortimer, with real rejoicing in his candor and courage.  Indeed, of late he had been developing cheer as well as courage, imbibing both, perhaps, from the roses in the vase on his employer’s desk.  Jack had ordered a fresh bunch put there every day; and when employees were sick packages of grapes and bunches of flowers came to them, in Little Rivers fashion, with J.W. on the card, as if they had come from the head of the firm himself.

“Maybe Jack will soften the old man a little,” ran a whisper from basement to roof.  For the battalions called him “Jack,” rather than “Mr. Wingfield,” just as Little Rivers had.