a head office clerk who was clamoring for permission
to get married and said:

"Look at that; if I had married I would not have this bunch of
security."

Evan had given up hoping that Castle would favor him with a private
interview; in another day the official would be gone, to repeat his
tortures on some other unsuspecting branch.

"What do you think of it, Gordon?" asked Henty.

"Of what?"

"It, i-t."

"You mean the inspection?"

"Your foot's asleep--sure; did you think I was talking about the
World's Series?"

"I don't mind the extra work," said Filter; "you see, that's the
difference between a good man and a bum one."

"Ugh!" said Henty, slapping his own cheek, "Right on the transmitter!"
He turned toward the teller and suggested a walk around the Banfield
pond, called a lake.

"It will do you good, Evan," he said.

A few nights' companionship had made the teller and junior chums; had
accomplished more in that respect than months of office association had
done. Henty sometimes called Nelson "Even." He said he thought the
nickname was a good one; in the first place it meant a poetic summer
evening; and in the second place it looked like the masculine gender
for Eve. The night Henty enlarged on the probable derivation of his
friend's name, Nelson laughed Mrs. Terry awake. It was the time of
night when anything sounds funny to the one who cannot fall asleep.

Evan liked the big rough-and-ready junior. He looked like a farm-hand,
and acted like a young steer; but he was amiable, and had brains, too.
Above all, he was wholesome.

"I'll be with you in a minute, A. P.," said the teller.

They walked along the lakeside. Spring had really come. Crows were
flying around aimlessly, early robins piped from a willow where the
"pussy-tails" were budding, and a blackbird with glossy neck chirruped
unmusically on a stump.

"Don't you ever get the fever to go back on the farm, A. P.?" said Evan.

"This time of year I do. Dad would like me to do the prodigal.
Sometimes I feel like going, too."

"Why don't you go?"

Henty licked his lips--a childish habit of his--and asked innocently:

"Straight, Evan, do you think I'll ever make a banker?"

"I don't know; they say a poor clerk often makes a good manager."

"At that rate," laughed Henty, "I ought to make a peach. Filter says
I'm on a par with those market-women when it comes to clerking."

Evan smiled, and picking up a stone threw it out into the