"It’s your affair, Mr. Collingham, not mine. I only venture to remind you that we’ve had this little tussle over almost every man we’ve ever bounced. It does great credit to your kindness of heart, and if you want to go on supporting Follett and his family for the rest of your life—" Collingham winced at this hint that his kindness of heart was greater than his business capacity. It was a point at which he always felt himself vulnerable. "Speaking of Follett’s family," he said, gliding away from the main topic, "we’ve got that boy of his here. How is he getting on?" "Ah, there you have a horse of another color. My first report on him was not so favorable; but now that we’ve knocked the high jinks out of him—" "Oh, we’ve done that, have we?" "He’s on the way to become a valuable boy. Good worker, cheery, likable. If he can get over his one defect, he’ll be worth hanging on to." "And his one defect is—" "Liable to get excited and lose his head. Type to see red in a fight, and do something dangerous." ———— Unaware of the effort which his former employer’s good will was vainly putting forth on his behalf, Josiah arrived in front of his pair of grassplots in Indiana Avenue. It was a trim little place, meeting all the wishes for a roof above his head which his soul had ever formed. He stood and looked at it, thinking of the days when little Gladys used to play "house" beneath one of the umbrella-shaped hydrangea bushes. That was not so long ago—only six or eight years. It was nine since he had bought Number Eleven, paying out three thousand dollars that had come to him from a matured twenty years’ endowment policy, together with another thousand Lizzie had inherited from an aunt. They had thought it a good investment because, if the worst ever came to the worst—and they didn’t know what they meant by that—they would always have a home. Now the home was in danger because he couldn’t raise a hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. He had been everywhere trying to borrow more, and he had failed. He had got to the point where his acquaintances in the different offices were putting him down as an "old bum." To Josiah, knowing all the shades of meaning in the term, it was a dreadful name as applied to himself; and he had heard it that very afternoon. An old friend, who had promised to lend him five of the hundred and fifteen already raised, had said on seeing him approach: "Here comes that old bum again." Josiah had turned about there and then. Giving up trying any more to raise the hundred and forty-seven, he had wandered home. He, Josiah Follett, an old bum!