“Me!” he cried.

“Yes, you.”

“But I can’t; I don’t know enough!  I’d make a mess of the whole business,” Bob expostulated.

“You’ve been around here for a year,” said Welton, “and things are running all right.  I want somebody to see that things move along, and you’re the one.  Are you going to refuse?”

“No; I suppose I can’t refuse,” said Bob miserably, and fell silent.

XIX

To Bob’s father Welton expressed himself in somewhat different terms.  The two men met at the Auditorium Annex, where they promptly adjourned to the Palm Room and a little table.

“Now, Jack,” the lumberman replied to his friend’s expostulation, “I know just as well as you do that the kid isn’t capable yet of handling a proposition on his own hook.  It’s just for that reason that I put him in charge.”

“And Welton isn’t an Irish name, either,” murmured Jack Orde.

“What?  Oh, I see.  No; and that isn’t an Irish bull, either.  I put him in charge so he’d have to learn something.  He’s a good kid, and he’ll take himself dead serious.  He’ll be deciding everything that comes up all for himself, and he’ll lie awake nights doing it.  And all the time things will be going on almost like he wasn’t there!”

Welton paused to chuckle in his hearty manner.

“You see, I’ve brought that crew up in the business.  Mason is as good a mill man as they make; and Tally’s all right in the woods and on the river; and I reckon it would be difficult to take a nick out of Collins in office work.”

“In other words, Bob is to hold the ends of the reins while these other men drive,” said his father, vastly amused.  “That’s more like it.  I’d hate to bury a green man under too much responsibility.”

“No,” denied Welton, “it isn’t that exactly.  Somebody’s got to boss the rest of ’em.  And Bob certainly is a wonder at getting the men to like him and to work for him.  That’s his strong point.  He gets on with them, and he isn’t afraid to tell ’em when he thinks they’re ‘sojering’ on him.  That makes me think:  I wonder what kind of ornaments these waiters are supposed to be.”  He rapped sharply on the little table with his pocket-knife.

“It’s up to him,” he went on, after the waiter had departed.  “If he’s too touchy to acknowledge his ignorance on different points that come up, and if he’s too proud to ask questions when he’s stumped, why, he’s going to get in a lot of trouble.  If he’s willing to rely on his men for knowledge, and will just see that everybody keeps busy and sees that they bunch their hits, why, he’ll get on well enough.”

“It takes a pretty wise head to make them bunch their hits,” Orde pointed out, “and a heap of figuring.”

“It’ll keep him mighty busy, even at best,” acknowledged Welton, “and he’s going to make some bad breaks.  I know that.”

“Bad breaks cost money,” Orde reminded him.