“Yes, finance is very touchy on certain points,” admitted the president.  “But I’m glad you’re not going to do any more talking here in town.  You’re somewhat of a new man here, and you don’t know the folks as I do.  I suppose some talk will have to be made as to why you and I are sticking along together, after you slapped my face in public.  You’d better let me manage the story.”

“You may say what you think is best, Mr. Britt.”

“They’re a suspicious lot, the men in this town.”  The banker surveyed Vaniman, making slits of his eyes.  “However, I’ve grown used to all this recent talk about me being a fool.  If it’s also said that I’m a fool for keeping you here, I won’t mind it.  And you mustn’t mind if it’s hinted around that you’re hanging on in the bank because you’ve got private reasons that you’re not talking about.”

The cashier greeted that sentiment with an inquiring frown.

“Oh, don’t be nervous, Frank!” Mr. Britt flapped his hand, making light of the matter.  He grinned.  “I won’t set you out as being the leader of a robber gang.  I’m not like the peaked-billed old buzzards of this place—­bound to say the worst of every stranger.  You’d better turn to and hate the critters here, just as I do.”

Britt’s tones rasped when he said that; his feelings were getting away from him.  The young man’s expression hinted that he was trying to reconcile this rancorous mood with Britt’s recent declarations of a new view of life.

“What I really meant to say, Frank, was that such has been my feeling in the past.  I’m trying to change my nature.  If I forget and slip once in a while, don’t lay it up against me.”

After that the president and the cashier in their daily conferences confined their discourse to the business of the bank.  Britt got into the way of asking Vaniman’s advice and of deferring to it when it had been given.  “You’re running the bank.  You know the trick better than I do.”

Therefore, it was perfectly natural for the president to bring up a topic of the past, a matter where Frank had given advice that had been scornfully rejected.  “I’ve been thinking over what you said about that stock of hard money in the vault needing a guard.  That fool of a Stickney has started a lot of gossip, in spite of my warning to him.  There’s no telling how far the gossip has spread.”

“That kind of news travels fast, sir.”

Britt showed worry.  “Perhaps I undertook too much of a chore for a little bank like ours.  But because we are little and because this town isn’t able to support the bank the way I had hoped, I thought I’d turn a trick that would net us more of a handy surplus in a modest sort of a way.”

Britt did not trouble himself to explain to the cashier that, by a private arrangement with the city broker, the deal would also turn a neat sum into the pocket of the president of the Egypt Trust Company, hidden in the charge of “commission and expenses,” split with due regard to the feelings of broker and president.