Children of the rich -- Fiction; Industrial relations -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
They turned, and encountered in the aisle a girl with a stenographer's
notebook in her hand; indeed, Bonbright all but stepped on her. She was
a slight, tiny thing, not thin, but small. Her eyes met Bonbright's
eyes and she grinned. No other word can describe it. It was not an
impertinent grin, nor a familiar grin, nor a COMMON grin. It was
spontaneous, unstudied--it lay at the opposite end of the scale from
Bonbright Foote VI's smile. Somehow the flash of it COMFORTED
Bonbright. His sensations responded to it. It was a grin that radiated
with well wishes for all the world. Bonbright smiled back, awkwardly,
and bobbed his head as she stepped aside for him to pass.
"What a grin!" he said, presently.
"Oh," said Rangar. "Yes--to be sure. The Girl with the Grin--that's
what they call her in the office. She's always doing it. Your father
hasn't noticed. I hope he doesn't, for I'm sure he wouldn't like it."
"As if," said Bonbright to himself, "she were happy--and wanted
everybody else to be."
"I'm sure I don't know," said Rangar. "She's competent."
They passed outside and through a covered passageway into the older of
the shops. Bonbright was not thinking about the shops, but about the
girl. She was the only thing he had encountered that momentous morning
that had interested him, the only thing upon which Bonbright Foote,
Incorporated, had not set the stamp of its repressing personality.
He tried to visualize her and her smile that he might experience again
that sensation of relief, of lightened spirit. In a measure he was able
to do so. Her mouth was large, he saw--no small mouth could have
managed that grin. She was not pretty, but, somehow, attractive. Her
eyes were bully; intelligent, humorous sort of eyes, he decided.
"Bet she's a darn nice kid," he concluded, boyishly. His father would
have been shocked at a thought expressed in such words.
"The business has done wonders these last five years," said Rangar,
intruding on Bonbright's thoughts. "Five years ago we employed less
than a thousand hands; to-day we have more than five thousand on the
payroll. Another few years and we shall have ten thousand."
"Axles?" asked Bonbright, mechanically.
"Axles," replied Rangar.
"Father doesn't approve of them--but they must be doing considerable
for the family bank account."
Rangar shot a quick glance at the boy, a glance with reproof in it for
such a flippancy. Vaguely he had heard that this young man had done
things not expected from a Foote; had, for instance, gone in for
athletics at the university. It was reported he had actually allowed
himself to be carried once on the shoulders of a cheering mob of
students! There were other rumors, also, which did not sit well on the
Foote tradition. Rangar wondered if at last a Foote had been born into
the family who was not off the old piece of cloth, who might, indeed,
prove difficult and disappointing. The flippancy indicated it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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