Of course the street laughed.  Kendrick’s indignation was quite too comic, considering his own reputation.  To this argument, those who held to the proprietor and partnership theories replied: 

“That may all be, but he wastes an awful lot of time in Starratt’s office for a fellow who’s so rushed with his other ventures.”

It was at this point that a few people raised their eyebrows significantly as they said: 

“Well, the old boy always did have a pretty keen eye for a skirt.”

It was impossible for Fred Starratt to move anywhere without hearing fragments of all this gossip.  During the noon hour particularly it filtered through the midday tattle of business, pleasure, and obscenity—­at the Market, at Collins & Wheeland’s, at Hjul’s coffee house, at Grover’s Lunchroom—­everywhere that clerks forgathered to appease their hunger and indulge in idle speculations.  Sometimes he got these things indirectly through chance slips in talks with his friends, again scraps of overheard conversation reached his ears.  Quite frequently a frank or a coarse acquaintance, without embarrassment or reserve, would tell him what had been said.  He soon got over protesting.  If he convinced anybody that he was getting Hilmer’s business without financial concessions, he had to take the nasty alternative which the smirks of his audience betrayed...  It would not have been so bad if he could have explained the situation to himself, but any attempt to solve the riddle moved in a vicious circle.  He used to long for a simplicity that would make him accept Hilmer’s favors on their face value.  Why couldn’t one believe in friendship and disinterestedness?  Perhaps it would have been easier if he had lacked any knowledge of Hilmer’s philosophy of life.  Starratt couldn’t remember anything in the recital of Hilmer’s past performance or his present attitude that dovetailed with benevolence...  He retreated, baffled from these speculative tilts, to the refuge of a comforting conviction that fortunately no man was thoroughly consistent.  Perhaps therein lay the secret of Hilmer’s puzzling prodigality—­because, boiled down to hard facts, it was apparent that Hilmer was making Starratt & Co. a present of several hundred dollars a year.  Sometimes, in a wild flight of conjecture, he used to wonder how far his argument with Hilmer regarding the ethics of being a negative party to another man’s dishonesty had been borne home?  It seemed almost too fantastic to fancy that he could have put over his rather finely spun business morality in such a brief flash, if at all.

At first he had plunged in too speedily to his venture to formulate many ideals of business conduct, but as he had progressed he found his standards springing to life full grown.