A Canadian Bankclerk Part 6

The remark fitted so well into Frankie's thoughts it amused her very much. Both girls laughed to each other without restraint. In fact, they were not very sedate for the main street of Hometon.

Mrs. Nelson had the house as clean and cheerful as mother and a summer's day can make a home. She sat on the front verandah with the material for a pair of pyjamas on her white-ap.r.o.ned lap. Long before the three youngsters were within hailing distance she waved the light flannelette above her head.

Evan's kiss made the mother blush. There never had been much demonstration of affection in the family: there had been no excuse for it. But now matters were different. Evan, too, was a trifle embarra.s.sed.

"Well, I like that," said Lou; "he never kissed me, mother!"

He caught his sister and bestowed a gentle bite on her cheek; she squirmed and would not let him away without a conventional kiss. When he had satisfied her, Lou glanced at the brother and then at Frankie.

"Someone else to be smacked," she said, stopping Frankie's flight by winding her arms around the twisting waist.

Evan was ready to turn the whole affair into a joke, and shouting "I'm game," he caught Frankie and pressed his lips to hers.

Again Mrs. Nelson blushed. So did Miss Arling.

"Gee!" cried Lou; "I just thought that's what the bank did for fellows."

Evan was thus acknowledged a regular bankclerk, and the laugh he vented was well tinctured with exultation.

Then began a series of questions and answers, recitations and interruptions, commendations and exaggerations. For two hours the mother, the son and the two wide-eyed girls listened and looked, or asked and received. The expressions Evan used puzzled them, but he shook his head deprecatingly when they asked for definitions which he knew would be unintelligible to them. He had not been talking with them long before he discovered how to interest them--by saying mysterious things. From the moment of his discovery he revelled in the clerical technical phrases that he had picked up at the Mt. Alban office, and the women justified the a.s.sertion of that circus man who said: "Humanity likes to be humbugged."

Lou, with a new and sudden affection for housework, insisted on getting the supper. Mrs. Nelson, of course, could not consent to it on this the night of her banker's return; n.o.body's hands but her own must lay the cloth and mix the salad. But Lou was strangely insistent, and the upshot of the compet.i.tion was co-operation. Evan was left on the verandah with Frankie.

No doubt there is a time for everything. That was the time for Evan to tell how lonesome he had been.... And this is the time to make a brief sketch of Miss Arling. Her face was sweet, then it was thoughtful; her eyes were blue-green, bright. She looked not unlike Love's incarnation. She bore a strong resemblance to a baby. In short, she was--what her best friends called her--a dear.

"You don't know how I have missed you, Frank," said Evan, and when she gave him a scrutinizing look, he hurriedly added: "a fellow gets so lonesome, you know."

"Do you like the bank, Evan?" she asked, fencing.

"You bet. A fellow gets such a good insight into--things."

"You were a dandy at school," she observed seriously.

He eyed her suspiciously. He was no longer a school-boy. He repeated a remark he had heard in the office:

"If a fellow goes to school all his life he misses the education of business. That's how it is so many professional men fall down when it comes to collecting accounts."

Frankie regarded him with a smile in which considerable admiration shone. She was just a girl of seventeen.

"I suppose it must be nice to make your own living," she said, and, after thinking a moment, "awfully nice!"

"You bet. I got tired of seeing Dad come home for meals all tuckered out, to find me playing ball on the lawn or reading literature on the verandah."

He cast his eyes toward Main Street. The village bell announced the evening meal, and a familiar figure walked toward the home of George Nelson, village merchant.

"There he comes, Frankie," said Evan, unconsciously sighing; "that step will always remind me of summer evenings and studious noon hours."

The bankclerk felt a sudden desire to work hard and repay his father for the consideration shown him at school. The village merchant would have been willing to help his boy through any college in the country, and the boy knew it. He felt proud of his start in business, of the paltry two dollars in his pocket, as he watched his father approach.

Mr. Nelson waved his hat when he saw Evan on the verandah; and when he came up,--

"Hey," he laughed, "it's a wonder you wouldn't call into a fellow's store and say good-day."

Evan shook hands heartily, smiling into the blue eyes that had more than once cowed him with a glance, when he was performing some ridiculous feat of boyhood.

"I understand," said the father, before Evan could make an excuse; "it's up to Ma. I'm surprised she leaves you alone out here with a young lady."

Perceiving the effect of his remark on Frankie, George Nelson laughed merrily and pinched the girl's cheek.

Soon the glad family was seated at a supper table, Mrs. Nelson's table--that is description enough. Frankie knew she was not an intruder. She was there as Lou's companion, not as Evan's sweetheart.

She knew Evan wanted her to be there, her mother knew it, his mother knew it, everybody knew it. The whole town knew it. Things might as well be done in the open, in Hometon, for they would out anyway.

"How's business, Dad?" asked Evan, in quite a business tone.

"Oh, just the same. We continue to buy b.u.t.ter for twenty-five cents and sell it retail at twenty-three cents. Joe breaks about the same number of eggs a day, and John is still good opposition. Well--how do you like the bank?"

"Fine," said Evan immediately; "the manager says he is going to push me along."

"Isn't that just splendid," exclaimed the mother, joyously.

"That depends," said Mr. Nelson, mischievously, "what is meant by being pushed along. If it means a move some hundreds of miles away----"

Mrs. Nelson sighed after vainly trying to smile. She was singularly quiet for a while. Her husband was enjoying himself immensely. He was an optimist, his wife inclined to pessimism. George Nelson believed in making the best of things that had already happened and making nothing of things to come until they came. Caroline, his wife, lived a great many of her troubles in advance. At the same time, the father was as "sentimental" as the mother in the teeth of happenings. He could suffer as much beneath a smile as she could behind tears. Encouraging the boy, however, was making the best of matters, and Mr. Nelson was going to do his part.

"Perhaps it's just as well you did quit school, Evan," he said cheerfully; "they say the new princ.i.p.al isn't up to much."

After that the conversation alternated between school and the bank, and Evan was enabled to gather valuable material for the inst.i.tution of comparisons. He launched out in the direction of a bank and kicked back-water schoolward. He managed so well no one had the heart to duck him; his friends had compa.s.sion on him in his young enthusiasm. But in spite of the consent silence is supposed to lend, Evan felt that he was scarcely convincing. An atmosphere of good old days was thrown about him; Frankie seemed to be dropping suggestions continually that took him back to the cla.s.sroom, where Literature and History charmed, or upon the ball field, where Mike Malone swung his long leg and his barnyard boot. A little opposition would have given the bankclerk a keener interest in the conversation; the reiteration of "yes" seemed to make him doubt his own arguments.

But Evan was not to be disheartened by imaginings. He used more of his technical talk on the "Dad," though with less effect than he had observed on the women, and, as a sort of clincher, divulged a little of the bank's business. The father took an interest there.

"Do you mean to say they've got deposits amounting to that?" he said, postponing a bite.

Mrs. Nelson lighted up. Evan was coming out.

"Isn't it grand," she cried, "to think your bank is so strong, Evan.

Just think of all those deposits."

"Humph!" grunted the father, "and a fellow can't get a loan to save his neck."

He stole a look at his son, but Evan was not familiar with loans, yet.

His first business in that direction was going to be done with Watson, a few days later. Mr. Nelson's hint affecting the management of a bank pa.s.sed over Evan's head, for Evan was a clerk, not a banker. When it came to actual banking the father knew much more than our banker did, but his knowledge was not comprehensible to the boy, much less to Mrs.

Nelson. The "Dad" could only eat his baked potato, look at his dish of strawberries--and trust to the future.

Sat.u.r.day evening was a small triumph for Evan. He walked up and down the village street with Frankie and Lou, ravaged the refreshment parlors, chatted at every crossing with a bevy of old schoolmates, and spent an enjoyable and typically "village" night.

Sunday morning was bright, and the Nelson family was gay. The word "bank" reverberated throughout the kitchen, the dining-room and parlor, floated around the verandah, tinkled among the Chinese jingles clinking in the breeze, and bounced like a ball on the lawn. Evan was happy all forenoon. And he talked a great deal at dinner.

After dinner, though, Our Banker's mind took a business turn. He thought of what the manager had said to him about work piling up and waiting for the clerk. While he sat for a few moments alone on the verandah he mentally sorted over a bunch of bills, entered them up wrong, heard Castle's squawking voice, and eventually yawned over a heap of mail. He found several envelopes returned from wrong banks and was (still mentally) expecting a memo from head office about them.