he says the stories just
pop out. So I transmit her request. J.R.G."

"P.D. waiting!" breathed Jack. "No changing Firio! He is like the pass. I
wonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!"

He wrote a story for Belvy. He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that
he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that
Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail. He
wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he
might come for a while--for a little while, with emphasis--if ever Jim
wired that he was needed.

"That was a good holiday--a regular week-end debauch away from the shop!"
he thought, when the letters were finished.

Soon after this came an event which, for the first time, gave John
Wingfield, Sr. a revelation of the side of his son that had won Little
Rivers and the interest of the rank and file of the store. Among Jack's
many suggestions, in his aim to carry out his father's talk about the
creative business sense the first night they were together, had been one
for a suburban clubbing delivery system. It had been dismissed as
fantastic, but Jack had asked that it be given a trial and his father had
consented. Its basis was a certain confidence in human nature. Jack and
his father had dined together the evening after the master of the
push-buttons had gone through the final reports of the experiment.

"Well, Jack, I am going to raise your salary to a hundred a week," the
father announced.

"On the ground that if you pay me more I might make myself worth more?"
Jack asked respectfully.

"No, as a matter of business. Whenever any man makes two dollars for the
store, he gets one dollar and I keep the other. That is the basis of my
success--others earning money for me. Your club scheme is a go. As the
accountant works it out, it has brought a profit of two hundred a week."

"Then I have done something worth while, really?" Jack asked, eagerly,
but half sceptical of such good fortune.

"Yes. You have created a value. You have used your powers of observation
and your brain. That's the thing that makes a few men employers while the
multitude remains employees."

"Father! Then I am not quite hopeless?"

"Hopeless! My son hopeless! No, no! I didn't expect you to learn the
business in a week, or a month, or even a year. Time! time!"

Nor did John Wingfield, Sr. wish his son to develop too rapidly. Now
that he was so sure of beating threescore and ten,