"Well, now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to make you head of the manufacturing department instead of getting in a new man, and shift Henson to purchasing. I'll put Jake on your old job, and expect you to give him a lift when he needs it. And you'd better keep up the most important of the jollying-letters, I guess."
"Well, I like that all right. I appreciate it. But of course I expect more pay--two men's work--"
"Let's see; what you getting now?"
"Twenty-three."
"Well, that's a good deal, you know. The overhead expenses have been increasing a lot faster than our profits, and we've--"
"Huh!"
"--got to see where new business is coming in to justify the liberal way we've treated you men before we can afford to do much salary-raising--though we're just as glad to do it as you men to get it; but--"
"Huh!"
"--if we go to getting extravagant we'll go bankrupt, and then we won't any of us have jobs.... Still, I am willing to raise you to twenty-five, though--"
"Thirty-five!"
Mr. Wrenn stood straight. The manager tried to stare him down. Panic was attacking Mr. Wrenn, and he had to think of Nelly to keep up his defiance. At last Mr. Guilfogle glared, then roared: "Well, confound it, Wrenn, I'll give you twenty-nine-fifty, and not a cent more for at least a year. That's final. Understand?"
"All right," chirped Mr. Wrenn.
"Gee!" he was exulting to himself, "never thought I'd get anything like that. Twenty-nine-fifty! More 'n enough to marry on now! I'm going to get twenty-nine-fifty!"
"Married five months ago to-night, honey," said Mr. Wrenn to Nelly, his wife, in their Bronx flat, and thus set down October 17, 1913, as a great date in history.
"Oh, I know it, Billy. I wondered if you'd remember. You just ought to see the dessert I'm making--but that's a s'prise."
"Remember! Should say I did! See what I've got for somebody!"
He opened a parcel and displayed a pair of red-worsted bed-slippers, a creation of one of the greatest red-worsted artists in the whole land. Yes, and he could afford them, too. Was he not making thirty-two dollars a week--he who had been poor! And his chances for the assistant managership "looked good."
"Oh, they'll be so comfy when it gets cold. You're a dear! Oh, Billy, the janitress says the Jewish lady across the court in number seventy is so lazy she wears her corsets to bed!"
"Did the janitress get the coal put in, Nell?"
"Yes, but her husband is laid off again. I was talking to her quite a while this afternoon.... Oh, dear, I do get so lonely for you, sweetheart, with nothing to do. But I did read some Kim this afternoon. I liked it."