n the end,
fertilizer. "I've got to!" he repeated, thickly.

"You won't get it, take it from me. To ask for it now simply means being
instantly fired."

"Being fired" sounded so much like being freed that Hendrik retorted,
pleasantly:

"Mr. Coster, you may yet live to take your orders from me, if I am
fired. But if I stay here, you never will; that's sure."

The cashier flushed angrily, opened his mouth, magnanimously closed it,
and, with a shrug of his shoulders, preceded Hendrik Rutgers into the
private office of the president.

"Mr. Goodchild," said Coster, so deferentially that Hendrik looked at
him in surprise for a full minute before the surprise changed into
contempt.

Mr. Goodchild, the president, did not even answer. He frowned,
deliberately walked to a window and stared out of it sourly. A little
deal of his own had gone wrong, owing to the stupidity of a subordinate.

_He had lost MONEY!_

He was a big man with jowls and little puffs under the eyes; also
suspicions of purple in cheeks and nose and suspicions of everybody in
his eyes. Presently he turned and spat upon the intruders. He did it
with one mild little word:

"Well?"

He then confined his scowl to the cashier. The clerk was a species of
the human dirt that unfortunately exists even in banks and has to be
apologized for to customers at times, when said dirt, before arrogance,
actually permits itself vocal chords.

They spoil the joy of doing business, damn 'em!

"This is the K-L ledger clerk," said Coster. "He wants a raise in
salary. I told him 'No,' and he then insisted on seeing you." Years of
brooding over the appalling possibility of having to look for another
job had made the cashier a skilful shirker of responsibilities. He
always spoke to the president as if he were giving testimony under oath.

"When one of these chaps, Mr. Coster," said the president in the
accusing voice bank presidents use toward those borrowers whose
collateral is inadequate, "asks for a raise and doesn't get it he begins
to brood over his wrongs. People who think they are underpaid
necessarily think they are overworked. And that is what makes socialists
of them!"

He glared at the cashier, who acquiesced, awe-strickenly: "Yes, sir!"

"As a matter of fact," pursued the president, still accusingly, "we
should reduce the bookkeeping force. Dawson tells me that at the
Metropolitan National they average one clerk to two hundred and
forty-two accounts. Th