Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle ManLewis, Sinclair
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Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
Lewis, Sinclair
Courtship -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Middle-aged men -- United States -- Fiction
The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and once
tossed it, would not half denote his wrath. At last! It was here—the
time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had been careful;
old Goglefogle was only barking; but why should _he_ be barked at? With
his voice palpitating and his heart thudding so that he felt sick he
declared:
“I’m _sure_, sir, about that order. I looked it up. Their buyer was
drunk!”
It was done. And now would he be discharged? The manager was speaking:
“Probably. You looked it up, eh? Um! Send me in the two order-records.
Well. But, anyway, I want you to be more careful after this, Wrenn.
You’re pretty sloppy. Now get out. Expect me to make firms pay twice
for the same order, cause of your carelessness?”
Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor. The manager
hadn’t seemed much impressed by his revolt.
The manager wasn’t. He called a stenographer and dictated:
“Bronx Emporium:
“GENTLEMEN:—Our Mr. Wrenn has again (underline that ‘again,’ Miss
Blaustein), again looked up your order for May Day novelties. As we
wrote before, order certainly was duplicated by ’phone. Our Mr. Wrenn
is thoroughly reliable, and we have his records of these two orders. We
shall therefore have to push collection on both—”
After all, Mr. Wrenn was thinking, the crafty manager might be merely
concealing his hand. Perhaps he had understood the defiance. That
gladdened him till after lunch. But at three, when his head was again
foggy with work and he had forgotten whether there was still April
anywhere, he began to dread what the manager might do to him. Suppose
he lost his job; The Job! He worked unnecessarily late, hoping that the
manager would learn of it. As he wavered home, drunk with weariness,
his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign
from The Job.
He had worked so late that when he awoke on Sunday morning he was still
in a whirl of figures. As he went out to his breakfast of coffee and
whisked wheat at the Hustler Lunch the lines between the blocks of the
cement walk, radiant in a white flare of sunshine, irritatingly
recalled the cross-lines of order-lists, with the narrow cement blocks
at the curb standing for unfilled column-headings. Even the ridges of
the Hustler Lunch’s imitation steel ceiling, running in parallel lines,
jeered down at him that he was a prosaic man whose path was a ruler.
He went clear up to the branch post-office after breakfast to get the
Sunday mail, but the mail was a disappointment. He was awaiting a
wonderful fully illustrated guide to the Land of the Midnight Sun, a
suggestion of possible and coyly improbable trips, whereas he got only
a letter from his oldest acquaintance—Cousin John, of Parthenon, New
York, the boy-who-comes-to-play of Mr. Wrenn’s back-yard days in
Parthenon. Without opening the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his
inside coat pocket, threw away his toothpick, and turned to Sunday
wayfaring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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