Page:Quinby and Son (1925).pdf/74

 "Fifteen dollars a week! Why, I got only two dollars."

"Must I pay my own son dollar for dollar to help me as though he were a stranger?" Mr. Quinby asked bitterly.

Supper that night was something of a strained meal, with Mrs. Quinby trying to maintain a flow of conversation and Bert silent in his chair. The boy had not meant to imply that he should have been paid more, but that fifteen dollars was too much for a clerk. Ordinarily, if he were misjudged, he sulked into injured dignity; but the thought of the fifteen dollars appalled him and urged him to make clear his position. Twice he prepared to speak, but each time a look at his father's face stopped him. His father was in no mood for explanations.

"Mother," he said that night when they were alone, "I didn't mean it that way." He felt confidence in speaking to her.

"Why didn't you say so?" she asked.

He looked down at the floor and made no answer.

"Your father has worries, Bert, that you know nothing of," she said gently. "He'll realize when he thinks it over that you didn't mean it that way."

The boy was comforted. Later, working in his room on his studies, he suddenly sat bolt upright. The umbrellas! If he told his father about that idea wouldn't it show that his thoughts had not