CHAPTER II
A COMPARISON
She read the letter from the Bogata Company and again glanced through the order. It was a large one. It called for certain supplies she knew the factory did not have on hand. She realized that the goods ordered were all of a special pattern and would be practically useless either to the Hapwood-Diller Company or to any other concern save the Bogata people if the latter should be unable to take the goods.
Yet this letter assumed that the order would be accepted and the goods turned out without any hesitancy on the part of the manufacturers, and upon the usual terms. The Bogata Company ignored the possibility of the Hapwood-Diller Company having heard of its financial embarrassments. The letter and accompanying order were sent, Ethel was sure, in a spirit of bravado. To use a common phrase, the Bogata people were “trying to put something over.”
If the scheme went through, all well and good. The Hapwood-Diller Company might be made the means of saving the Bogata people from actual and complete collapse. Ethel knew, however, that her employing concern was in no shape to assume such a burden. Yet if the firm ordering the goods finally pulled out of its quagmire of financial difficulty, its friendship rather than its enmity was to be desired.
Her mind centered upon the matter, the logical circumstances connected with it marching in slow procession through her brain. She was acquainted with every important order now on the factory’s books. Even Jim Mayberry had no better grasp of the details of the factory’s affairs than Ethel Clayton.
Suddenly she got up and went to a file cabinet wherein was listed the particulars of all orders as yet unfinished. She began to figure with pencil and pad upon the already promised output of the factory and its possible output when the force was driven at top speed.
Her calculations led her to certain unmistakable conclusions. She went back to her desk, calmly wrote the letter, typed it, and took the letter and her figures in to Barton. He was about to close his desk for the day.
“Do you think you have succeeded?” he asked, smiling and taking the typed sheet from her hand. But in a moment he glanced up quickly and with a slight frown. “What is this you say here, Miss Clayton? We cannot accept the order because of work already contracted for? Why, that----”
“Is the plain truth, Mr. Barton!” she exclaimed, putting forward her array of figures. “The factory is now working maximum hours and with a full crew in all departments. I have heard you say yourself that either extra help or overtime cuts into the profits rather than increases them. To fulfill contracts we have accepted, if you took on this of the Bogata Company, we would have to run the machines longer hours and pay extra wages. The Bogata people offer no price for their work to cover such an increased cost. My letter embodies the actual truth without going into particulars; but my statements can be easily proved if they are inclined to be critical.”
Barton’s face had been gradually lighting up, and it was with real admiration that he said at her conclusion:
“Fine! I’ll sign that and you can put it in the mail in the morning. Has John gone to the post-office?”
“Yes, Mr. Barton.”
“The morning will do,” said the general manager, affixing his signature to the letter. “You certainly are a capable assistant.”
She flushed at his words as she turned from his desk; and the color remained in her countenance for some time. But it was not a flush of pleasure. Indeed, the expression of her countenance was not at all happy as she closed her desk and left the main office a little later.
At the street exit she hesitated; then she went back through the drying and cutting rooms and had John Murphy let her out of the side gate which would not be opened for an hour yet for the exit of the factory hands. She had caught a glimpse of Jim Mayberry sitting in his car out in front.
She did not like the superintendent, and for more reasons than one. In the first place, he was one of those men who seem to have no respect at all for girls who worked. Ethel was not sure how well he was received by Mailsburg people whose first thoughts were of society. But Mayberry had a bad reputation among many respectable people. Careful mothers and fathers frowned on his attentions to their daughters.
As she turned into Burnaby Street on her way home she saw Frank Barton ahead of her. His military stride was likewise taking him briskly homeward. The girl might have hastened her own steps and joined him; but she hesitated, for that was not like Ethel Clayton. Her association with the handsome general manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company had been entirely on a business footing. The fact that they attended the same church had scarcely brought them together outside the offices of the concern.
Barton was well liked by most Mailsburg people. Especially had he been commended for his work of the last two years--since he had been raised to the pinnacle of general manager of the biggest manufacturing concern in the town.
Yet there are always carping critics in every place and in any event. As mark the criticism hurled at the young manager from the sidewalk that afternoon as the boys were marching from the National Guard Armory to the railway station.
Ethel knew that the suggestion that Barton was a slacker must have hurt the general manager cruelly. She, perhaps as well as anybody else, knew why Frank Barton, trained in the Guard, and a military man from choice, was not marching away with this first quota at the call to arms.
If many Mailsburg people looked at Barton in the way suggested by the careless criticism which had lately reached his ears, Ethel Clayton knew that the manager’s existence was going to be a hard one. She did not want to see him go to the war. Indeed, she was by no means inspired as yet with any degree of patriotism. The war was too remote and our reason for entering into it too theoretical. The blood of but few of our men had been shed, and those were, as a rule, such as were connected with the more spectacular portions of the service, nor had our women and children been butchered by the Hun.
In her heart Ethel longed to say something to Frank Barton to ease the wound which he had suffered that afternoon. Should she overtake him and speak? And then, even while she hesitated, the humming of a smoothly running automobile sounded behind her.
She turned to look, startled, fearing it was Jim Mayberry. But a girl was driving the car that swerved in toward the curb, stopping just beside the manager of the Hapwood-Diller Manufacturing Company.
“Oh, Mr. Barton!”
The girl in the car was handsome, but with a high color and a shrill voice. She had a great deal of light hair, which was carefully dressed; she wore an expensive motor hat and veil; her cerise motor coat was of heavy silk. If the frame ever sets off the picture to advantage, then Helen Fuller was a work of art!
“It’s just too, too lovely that I should catch you this way, Mr. Barton,” she cried, as Ethel approached nearer. “You can’t say you are busy and I am _sure_ it is not yet dinner time. I _must_ see you about our garden festival. You know, for the Red Cross. We _all_ must do our bit _these_ days. Do hop in and advise with poor me.”
Ethel came within range of Barton’s vision. He gave her as usual one of his warm, kind smiles, lifting his hat. Helen Fuller stared at the passing girl, who plainly heard her scornful query: “One of your factory hands, Mr. Barton?”
“One of our office force--and one of the most valuable on the pay roll of the Hapwood-Diller Company, Miss Fuller, I assure you.”
But the cheerful reply did not take the barb out of the wound Helen Fuller’s question had made. A little farther along the street, however, Ethel shook herself and murmured:
“What a perfect fool I am! It is ridiculous to mind anything that Helen Fuller says. She remembers very well going to school with me and that I was always at or near the head of the class and she at the foot. That was before Grandon Fuller had that stock in the company left him by Uncle Diller. Dear me! how the possession of money changes some people.” Then, and cheerfully, she exclaimed aloud: “Ah! here’s Benway.”
A young man with a perfectly splendid head of brown curly hair, flawless complexion, level brows, fine, open gray eyes set well apart, a straight nose and lips not full enough to be sensuous but not too thin, the whole countenance softened by a cleft chin and humorous lines at the corners of his mouth--that was Benway Chase.
He came swinging along the walk and seized Ethel companionably by her right arm, although that placed him upon the inner side of the path. She met his look with one of pleasure, and they went on together like the good comrades they were.
People whom they knew and met greeted them with a matter-of-course air. To see Ethel Clayton and Ben Chase together was nothing astonishing for Mailsburg folk. They had been neighbors and chums since they were in rompers.
Her brightness of countenance faded when her old chum left her at the gate of the Clayton cottage. She cast a commiserating glance after him as he went on, whistling. It was not until then that the withered, useless right arm of the young man became really noticeable.
She called to her mother that she was home from work and went up to her room to freshen her dress for dinner. Benway slipped out of her mind as she did this--and most other things, save one. That was a comparison she had begun to make on Burnaby Street between herself and Helen Fuller.
Was she jealous of the other girl? Why should she be? She was sure she would not care to change places with Miss Fuller, money and all, for any consideration. Yet--
She saw Frank Barton getting into the Fuller car, which Helen drove so conspicuously about the streets of Mailsburg. Ethel Clayton could not do that! Ethel must work, and dress plainly six days in the week because of her position. Miss Fuller was always dressed as gaily as a bird of paradise. And one must confess that men’s eyes were attracted--sometimes blinded--by gay clothes. Frank Barton could not be blamed for being a man. No. She had no complaint to make against Frank Barton. He was always polite and kind and appreciative.
“And he’d be all of that to a stray kitten that chanced to cross his path!” she ejaculated in sudden disgust. “Helen Fuller has something to offer him that I haven’t.”