They shook hands at last, and Bartley ran home to
Marcia. He burst into the room with a glowing
face. “Well, Marcia,” he shouted,
“I’ve got my basis!”
“Hush! No! Don’t be so loud!
You haven’t!” she answered, springing to
her feet. “I don’t believe it!
How hot you are!”
“I’ve been running—almost all
the way from the Events office. I’ve got
a place on the Events,—assistant managing-editor,—thirty
dollars a week,” he panted.
“I knew you would succeed yet,—I
knew you would, if I could only have a little patience.
I’ve been scolding myself ever since you went.
I thought you were going to do something desperate,
and I had driven you to it. But Bartley, Bartley!
It can’t be true, is it? Here, here!
Do take this fan. Or no, I’ll fan you,
if you’ll let me sit on your knee! O poor
thing, how hot you are! But I thought you wouldn’t
white for the Events; I thought you hated that old
Witherby, who acted so ugly to you when you first came.”
“Oh, Witherby is a pretty good old fellow,”
said Bartley, who had begun to get his breath again.
He gave her a full history of the affair, and they
rejoiced together over it, and were as happy as if
Bartley had been celebrating a high and honorable
good fortune. She was too ignorant to feel the
disgrace, if there were any, in the compact which Bartley
had closed, and he had no principles, no traditions,
by which to perceive it. To them it meant unlimited
prosperity; it meant provision for the future, which
was to bring a new responsibility and a new care.
“We will take the parlor with the alcove, now,”
said Bartley. “Don’t excite yourself,”
he added, with tender warning.
“No, no,” she said, pillowing her head
on his shoulder, and shedding peaceful tears.
“It doesn’t seem as if we should ever
quarrel again, does it?”
“No, no! We never shall,” she murmured.
“It has always come from my worrying you about
the law, and I shall never do that any more. If
you like journalism better, I shall not urge you any
more to leave it, now you’ve got your basis.”
“But I’m going on with the law, now, for
that very reason. I shall read law all my leisure
time. I feel independent, and I shall not be anxious
about the time I give, because I shall know that I
can afford it.”
“Well, only you mustn’t overdo.”
She put her lips against his cheek. “You’re
more to me than anything you can do for me.”
“Oh, Marcia!”
Now that Bartley had got his basis and had no favors
to ask of any one, he was curious to see his friend
Halleck again; but when, in the course of the Solid
Men Series, he went to interview A Nestor of the Leather
Interest, as he meant to call the elder Halleck, he
resolved to let him make all the advances. On
a legitimate business errand it should not matter to
him whether Mr. Halleck welcomed him or not.
The old man did not wait for Bartley to explain why
he came; he was so simply glad to see him that Bartley
felt a little ashamed to confess that he had been eight
months in Boston without making himself known.
He answered all the personal questions with which
Mr. Halleck plied him; and in his turn he inquired
after his college friend.
