“You are beginning at the bottom in your profession, though, aren’t you?”

“Of course; any man worth his salt begins that way. And that brings us down to the finances again. Have you carried the figuring far enough along to be able to guess at what will be left after all the bills are paid?”

Oswald shook his head. “Your father hasn’t taken either of us fully into his confidence,” he averred. “He insists that we must try to realize on the assets so as to have a hundred thousand dollars left to pay a personal debt which doesn’t appear on the bank’s books. If we subtract even[52] half of that amount from the most favorable outcome at present in sight, there will be nothing of any account left for him and your sister.”

[52]

“It will be enough; with what I may be able to add to it,” said David, neither affirming nor denying the lawyer’s hint that he was not entirely in his father’s confidence.

“You are going away to look for a job?” Oswald asked.

“As it happens, I don’t have to look for one. I leave for Chicago on the eleven-fifteen to-night, and my job is waiting for me.”

“Fine!” was the friendly approval. “Is it a secret?”

“Not at all. I’m going to work for the Grillage Engineering Company; an assistant engineer’s billet on a bridge construction job up in Wisconsin. There is a reason why I shouldn’t take the job, and a still stronger reason why I can’t refuse.”

“That’s capital!” said Oswald, ignoring the qualifying part of the announcement. “You are lucky—or I guess you are. They say Mr. Eben Grillage can dig his profit out of the shrewdest contract that was ever drawn and never turn a hair. But as an engineer in the field, you won’t have anything to do with that part of it.”

[53]David glanced up quickly with a little frown coming and going between the honest eyes.

[53]

“Again I’ll have to ask you to break it off, Bert. Mr. Grillage is my father’s friend.”

“Of course he is; I forgot for the moment,” was the placative reply. “I shouldn’t have repeated the gossip—which is only gossip, after all. I suppose you remember his daughter Vinnie, as a little girl, don’t you?”

 Prev. P 29/208 next