"Jim Wheaton's one of those men who never make mistakes," said Raridan, with the scorn of a man whose own mistakes do not worry him. "He went into that bank as a boy, and was first a model messenger, and then a model clerk; and when they had to have a cashier there was the model assistant, who had been a model everything else, so they put him in. There wasn't anybody else for the job; and I guess he's a good man for it, too. A bank cashier doesn't dare to make mistakes; and as Wheaton is not of that warm, emotional nature that would lead him to lend money without getting something substantial to hold before the borrower got away, he's the model cashier. You've heard of those bank cashiers who can refuse a loan to a man and send him out of the bank singing happy chants. Well, Jim isn't that kind. When he turns down a man, the man doesn't go on his way rejoicing. I don't know how much money Wheaton's got. He's made something, of course, and Porter would probably sell him stock up to a certain point. He'll die rich, and nobody, I fancy, will ever be any gladder because he's favored this little old earth with his presence." As a bank clerk the teller's cage had shut Wheaton off from the world. Young women of social distinction who came sometimes to get checks cashed, knew him as a kind of automaton, that looked at both sides of their checks and at themselves, and then passed out coin and paper to them; they saw him nowhere else, and did not bother themselves about him. After his promotion to be assistant cashier, he saw the world closer at hand. He had a desk and could sit down and talk to the men whom he had studied from the cage for so long. The young women, too, approached him no longer with checks to be cashed, but with little books in which they urged him officially and personally to subscribe to charities. Porter, who was naturally a man of generous impulses, knew his own weakness and made the cashier the bank's almoner. He was very sure that Wheaton would be as careful of the bank's money as of his own; he had taken judicial knowledge of the fact that Wheaton's balance on the bank's books had shown a marked and steady growth through all the years of his connection with it.