Ben stood awaiting the package from the nervous fingers of the office employee. He was more amused than disappointed in the narrow view Mr. Saxton took of things in general. The quarter of a dollar and the “extra job,” as he designated it, were characteristic of the tight-fisted manufacturer. His treatment of Ben had been of a piece awarded Mr. Hardy, and Ben was not much surprised.

The Saxton Automobile Works was doing a large and growing business, but it was not his own business ability, as the self-centered manufacturer imagined, that had brought about all this progress and prosperity. Mr. Hardy had designed the Estrelle auto. The Saxton Company never gave him credit for this. Ben’s father was more of an inventor than a business man, and he had never protected himself as a shrewder man might have done.

He was a valuable workman in the Saxton service and received very good pay. Ben, however, had always thought that his father should have been given more credit and money that he really got.

Ben’s mother had often talked to her husband about this. Finally Mr. Hardy had gone to Mr. Saxton and had put the case before him. Nearly all the new and popular points about the Estrelle machine were inventions of Mr. Hardy. Jasper Saxton did not deny this, but he proposed that the patents be taken out in his own name. In an indefinite way he agreed to make some kind of an equitable settlement[Pg 13] with his employer as soon as the rush season was over. Mr. Hardy asked for a memorandum of the agreement.

[Pg 13]

To this Mr. Saxton reluctantly consented after a great deal of delay. Mr. Hardy placed the precious document in his coat pocket. When he went back to work he hung up his coat in its usual place. When he got home that night the written agreement was missing.

An unavailing search was made for the document. Then in a day or two Mr. Hardy went back to his employer and related the circumstances, asking for a new copy of the agreement.

Mr. Saxton put him off on the pretext of being very busy. Then, when urged by Mrs. Hardy and Ben, the head machinist again approached Jasper Saxton, the latter told him that if he would wait till the active selling season was over and he could get at his books, they would go together to a lawyer and have a contract drawn up in due legal form.

Mr. Hardy was easily satisfied and rested content with this promise. His heart was in his work. When Ben 

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