's will give us jobs--and--"

They clattered down the stairs to the tune of Johnny's business
expansions.

XX

THE PARTNERS

The thousand envelopes were printed and delivered. Mr. English expressed
himself as entirely satisfied, and allowed the new firm to experiment on
bill heads. Mr. Orde promised an order of more envelopes when these were
finished.

Johnny's commercial instincts were thoroughly aroused. He saw visions of
wealth beyond the dreams of wood-box-filling or street-sprinkling with
the garden hose in summer. In that community even Johnny English had to
earn his own pocket money. Bobby, too, entered into the game with
enthusiasm--for over a week. Then he grew tired of the mechanical
repetition of that which he had acquired so painfully. It no longer
interested him to set the type, to lock the form, to ink and clean the
ink plates. He had carried these things to their last refinement of
skill. As for the actual printing--the endless insetting of paper,
pulling down on the lever, removing the paper--this he could no longer
stand for more than half an hour at a time. Then a deep lethargy seized
his every faculty. His mind sank to stupor. Time no longer possessed
dimensions, but blew into a vast Present which was never going to cease.
If he kept at it a half-hour after this condition manifested itself he
emerged from the ordeal as tired and sleepy as though he had undergone
hard physical labour. It was more than mere boredom; it was a revolt of
the soul.

At first his loyalty to the firm and his sense of duty drove him on.
Then gradually he relinquished the printing to Johnny. That young man
could cheerfully have stuck to the press twelve hours a day, if he had
been permitted. Each printed bit of paper laid aside on the growing pile
to his left represented just that much more pocket money.

So, strangely enough, the relative position of the two boys toward the
work in hand was reversed. At first, when the mechanical difficulties
seemed insurmountable, Bobby's perseverance had been inexhaustible,
while Johnny was a dozen times inclined to let the whole problem go
smash. Now, when the task of feeding into the press the thousand
necessary to fill orders seemed endless, Johnny's patience rose more
than adequate to the occasion, while Bobby's spirit shrank at the mere
size of it.

Finally matters adjusted themselves so that Bobby saw to the alignment,
the perfection of the impression, all the rest o