Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-11-11


concluded with determination and
picked up his hat.
Just a minute" Spaulding held him
with a gesture You're forgetting
something-at least l am. There's a
months pay coming to you. The CASH
ier will hand you the check as you go
out"
"A months pay?" Duncan said
blankly. "How's that? I've drawn up
to the end of this week already, if
you didn't know it,
"Of course knew it. But we never
let our men go without months no
tice or it's equivalent, and
NO" Duncan interrupted firmly
no: but thank you just the same.
couldn't-l really couldn't. It's good
of you, but Now" he broke off
abruptly, i've left my accounts, what
there is of them, with the bookkeep-
ing department, and the checks for
my sample trunks. There'll be few
dollars coming to me on my expense
account and I'll send you my address
as soon as l get one
But, look here Spaulding got to
his feet, frowning.
NO" reiterated Duncan positively,
there's no use. I'm grateful to you
for your liberation of me and all that,
but we can't do anything better now
than call it all off. Goodby, Mr..
Snop15inp"
Spaulding nodded, accepting defeat
with the better grace because of an
innate conviction that it was just as
we'll after all. And, furthermore, he
admired Duncan's stand, so he offered
his hand-an unusual cOndescension.
You'll make good somewhere yet,
he asserted.
II wish | could believe it," Duncan's
grasp was firm since he felt more as
sured of some humanity latent in his
late employer. However, goodby."
Good luck to you," rang in his ears
as the door put a period to the inter-
view. He stopped and took up the
battered suit case and rusty overcoat
which he had left outside the Junior
partners office, then went on, shaking
his head. Much obliged" he said
huskily to himself, but what's the
good of that. There's no room any
where for a professional failure, and
that's what l am-just a ne'er- do-well
I never realized what that meant
really before, and it's certainly taken
me a damn long time to find out.
But know now, all right"
Despondently he went down to the
sidewalk and merged himself with the
crowd, moving with it, though thou
sand miles apart from it, and presently
diverging, struck across town toward
the Worth street subway station
And the worst of it is he's too
sharp not to find it out-if he hasn't
by this time-and too decent BY far
to let me know if he has. 1t can't go
on this way with us. | can't let him.
Got to break with him somehow-now
today. l won't let him think me
what I've been all along to him. Bless
his foolish heart!"
There was no depreciation of Kel-
logg's goodness in his mood, simply de-
termination no longer to he a charge
upon it. To contemplate the sum to-
tai of the benefits he had received at
Kellogg's hands since the day when
the latter had found him i'll and half
starved, friendless as stray pup, on
-. cto
gered his imagination.
He could never repay it, he told
himself, save inadequately, little by
little-mostly by gratitude and such
consideration as he purposed now to
exhibit by removing himself and his
distress from the others ken. Here
was an end to comfort for him, an
end to living in Kellogg's rooms, eat
ing his food, busying his servants,
spending his money, not so much bor-
rowed as pressed upon him.
There crawled in his mind a clammy
memory of the sort of housing he had
known in past days, and he shuddered
inwardly, smelling again the effluvia of
dank OllClOtn ana muSlE carpets, Vi
fishballs and fried ham, of old style
plumbing and of SO a week humanity
in the unwashen raw, the odor of mis-
cry that permeated the lodgings tol
which his lack of means had intro
duced him. He could see again, and
with a painful vividness of mental Vi
sion, the degenerate "brownstone
fronts that mask those haunts of
wretchedness, with their flights of
crumbling brownstone steps leading
up to oaken portals haggard with flax
ing paint, fanked by squares of soiled
note paper upon which ineXpert hands
had traced the warning, not abandon
hope all ye who enter here" but Fur
nished rooms to let with board"
And to this he must return, to that
treadmill round of blighted days and
joyless lights must set his face.
Alighting at the Grand Central sta
ton. he packed the double weight of