“Why?”

“Four times out of five we have to sell to a municipal committee, and the other time we have to monkey with the purchasing agent of a corporation.  In either case it takes money—­other money besides the difference in price.”

Tom wagged his head in a slow affirmative.  “It’s rotten!” he said.

Norman smiled.

“It’s our privilege to cuss it out; but it’s a condition.”

Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out water-mains.  He made a pencil computation on the back of an envelope.  The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave a margin of profit.  Before he took the train he went to the bank, and, when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure the “wheel-horse” member of the municipal purchasing board that he was ready to talk business on a modern business basis.

Notwithstanding, he lost the contract.  Other people were growing desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough.  One member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts.  A check had been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the month’s pay-roll at Gordonia.

“You sent a boy to mill,” said the loyal one.  “And now it’s all over, I don’t mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that.  Bullinger’s a hog.”

“I’d like to do him up,” said Tom vindictively.

“Well, that might be done, too.  But it would cost you something.”

Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance.  But on the way home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile.  He could meet one more pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come.  This one contract would have saved the day, and it was lost.

The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him down at Gordonia late in the afternoon.  There was no one at the station to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald to proclaim it.  Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time, the big plant was silent and deserted.

Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the Woodlawn porch.

“You needn’t say it, son,” was his low greeting, when Tom had flung himself into a chair.  “It was in the South Tredegar papers this morning.”

“What was in the papers?”

“About our losin’ the Indiany contract.  I reckon it was what did the business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm brewin’ when we missed the pay-day yesterday.”

Tom started as if he had been stung.

“Missed the pay-day?  Why, I left money in bank for it when I went to Louisville!”