“That was a good holiday—­a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!” he thought, when the letters were finished.

Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store.  Among Jack’s many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father’s talk about the creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one for a suburban clubbing delivery system.  It had been dismissed as fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had consented.  Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature.  Jack and his father had dined together the evening after the master of the push-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment.

“Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week,” the father announced.

“On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?” Jack asked respectfully.

“No, as a matter of business.  Whenever any man makes two dollars for the store, he gets one dollar and I keep the other.  That is the basis of my success—­others earning money for me.  Your club scheme is a go.  As the accountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week.”

“Then I have done something worth while, really?” Jack asked, eagerly, but half sceptical of such good fortune.

“Yes.  You have created a value.  You have used your powers of observation and your brain.  That’s the thing that makes a few men employers while the multitude remains employees.”

“Father!  Then I am not quite hopeless?”

“Hopeless!  My son hopeless!  No, no!  I didn’t expect you to learn the business in a week, or a month, or even a year.  Time! time!”

Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly.  Now that he was so sure of beating threescore and ten, while retaining the full possession of his faculties, if he followed the rules of longevity, he would not have welcomed a son who could spring into the saddle at once.  He wanted to ride alone.  He who had never shared his power with anyone!  He who had never admitted anyone into even a few shares of company partnership in his concern!  Time! time!  The boy would never fall heir to undivided responsibility before he was forty.  John Wingfield, Sr. was pleased with himself; pleased over a good sign; and he could not deny that he was pleased at the sudden change in Jack.  For he saw Jack’s eyes sparkling into his own; sparkling with comradeship and spontaneous gratification.  Was the boy to be his in thought and purpose, after all?  Yes, of course; yes, inevitably, with the approach of maturity.  Gradually the flightiness of his upbringing would wear off down to the steel, the hard-tempered, paternal steel.

“You can scarcely realize what a fight it has been for me until you know the life I led out in Arizona, getting strong for you and the store,” Jack began.