Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/45

40 "Yes, father. I, myself, was just about to recommend four hundred dollars. I think she can put the money to good use."

A little later Barry returned to the president's room with Page, the treasurer, who brought with him a check and a voucher, both of which he handed to Mr. Malleson. The president examined the voucher carefully, signed the check, and handed the papers back to Page.

"Shall I send a special messenger up with them?" asked the treasurer.

"I'll take them to her myself," said Barry promptly.

Page turned to him with a smile.

"Hunting for a repetition of that experience with the Widow McAndrew, are you?" he asked.

Barry's experience with the Widow McAndrew was one of the standing jokes among the office force of the company.

"Don't mention it," said Barry. "It gives me a chill now to think of it. You know I'm rather fastidious, Page, rather fastidious. And the woman wasn't what you might call personally neat, and she'd been crying, and her hair wasn't combed, and she certainly weighed not less than two hundred—no discoverable waist-line, you know; and when I saw her bearing down on me"

The two men passed out of the room and closed the door behind them, Barry continuing with the relation of his oft-repeated story of the Widow McAndrew's gratitude.

In the meantime the president of the company had plunged again into the work on his desk. But when the door closed on Barry and Page he looked up, laid down his pen, rose and walked over to one of the windows and stood for many minutes looking out into the plaza on which his factory buildings fronted, and up the narrow street that led toward the heart of the city.