over.”
He looked from one to the other of them eagerly. Parrish and Van Buren nodded at him comprehendingly. Jones after a puzzled half-moment nodded too.
“I want you each to take two weeks and spend them as you think you’ll spend your time when you’re too old to work. I want you to solve my problem for me. And whichever one I think has got the most out of his leisure—he’ll be the man to carry on my business. I’ll know it won’t swamp him like it’s swamped me.”
“You mean you want us to enjoy ourselves?” inquired Rip Jones politely. “Just go out and have a big time?”
Cyrus Girard nodded.
“Anything you want to do.”
“I take it Mr. Girard doesn’t include dissipation,” remarked Van Buren.
“Anything you want to do,” repeated the older man. “I don’t bar anything. When it’s all done I’m going to judge of its merits.”
“Two weeks of travel for me,” said Parrish dreamily. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ll——”
“Travel!” interrupted Van Buren contemptuously. “When there’s so much to do here at home? Travel, perhaps, if you had a year; but for two weeks—— I’m going to try and see how the retired business man can be of some use in the world.”
“I said travel,” repeated Parrish sharply. “I believe we’re all to employ our leisure in the best——”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Cyrus Girard. “Don’t fight this out in talk. Meet me in the office at ten-thirty on the morning of August first—that’s two weeks from tomorrow—and then let’s see what you’ve done.” He turned to Rip Jones. “I suppose you’ve got a plan too.”
“No, sir,” admitted Rip Jones with a puzzled look; “I’ll have to think this over.”
But though he thought it over for the rest of the evening Rip Jones went to bed still uninspired. At midnight he got up, found a pencil and wrote out a list of all the good times he had ever had. But all his holidays now seemed unprofitable and stale, and when he fell asleep at five his mind still threshed disconsolately on the prospect of hollow useless hours.
Next morning as Lola Girard was backing her car out of the garage she saw him hurrying toward her over the lawn.
“Ride in town, Rip?” she asked cheerfully.
“I reckon so.”
“Why do you only reckon so? Father and the others left on the nine-o’clock train.”
He explained to her briefly that they had all temporarily lost their jobs and there was no necessity of getting to the office today.
“I’m kind of worried about it,” he said gravely. “I sure hate to leave my work. I’m going to run in this afternoon and see if they’ll let me finish up a few things I had started.”
“But you better be thinking how you’re going to amuse yourself.”
He looked at her helplessly.
“All I can think of doing is maybe take to drink,” he confessed. “I come from a little town, and when they say leisure they mean hanging round the corner store.” He shook his head. “I don’t want any leisure. This is the first chance I ever had, and I want to make good.”
“Listen, Rip,” said Lola on a sudden impulse. “After you finish up at the office this afternoon you meet me and we’ll fix up something together.”
He met her, as she suggested, at five o’clock, but the melancholy had deepened in his dark eyes.
“They wouldn’t let me in,” he said. “I met your father in there, and he told me I had to find some way to amuse myself or I’d be just a bored old man like him.”
“Never mind. We’ll go to a show,” she said consolingly; “and after that we’ll run up on some roof and dance.”
It was the first of a week of evenings they spent together. Sometimes they went to the theatre, sometimes to a cabaret; once they spent most of an afternoon strolling in Central Park. But she saw that from having been the most light-hearted and gay of the three young men, he was now the most moody and depressed. Everything whispered to him of the work he was missing.
Even when they danced at teatime, the click of bracelets on a hundred women’s arms only reminded him of the busy office sound on Monday morning. He seemed incapable of inaction.
“This is mighty sweet of you,” he said to her one afternoon, “and if it was after business hours I can’t tell you how I’d enjoy it. But my mind is on all the things I ought to be doing. I’m—I’m right sad.”
He saw then that he had hurt her, that by his frankness he had rejected all she was trying to do for him. But he was incapable of feeling differently.
“Lola, I’m mighty sorry,” he said softly, “and maybe someday it’ll be after hours again, and I can come to you——”
“I won’t be interested,” she said coldly. “And I see I was foolish ever to be interested at all.”
He was standing beside her car when this conversation took place, and before he could reply she had thrown it into gear and started away.
He stood there looking after her sadly, thinking that perhaps he would never see her anymore and that she would remember him always as ungrateful and unkind. But there was nothing he could have said. Something dynamic in him was incapable of any except a well-earned rest.
“If it was only after hours,” he muttered to himself as he walked slowly away. “If it was only after hours.”
III
At ten o’clock on the morning of August first a tall, bronzed young man presented himself at the office of Cyrus Girard, Inc., and sent in his card to the president. Less than five minutes later another young man arrived, less blatantly healthy, perhaps, but with the light of triumphant achievement blazing in his eyes. Word came out through the palpitating inner door that they were both to wait.
“Well, Parrish,” said Van Buren condescendingly, “how did you like Niagara Falls?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” answered Parrish haughtily. “You can determine that on your honeymoon.”
“My honeymoon!” Van Buren started. “How—what made you think I was contemplating a honeymoon?”
“I merely meant that when you do contemplate it you will probably choose Niagara Falls.”
They sat for a few minutes in stony silence.
“I suppose,” remarked Parrish coolly, “that you’ve been making a serious study of the deserving poor.”
“On the contrary, I have done nothing of the kind.” Van Buren looked at his watch. “I’m afraid that our competitor with the rakish name is going to be late. The time set was ten-thirty; it now lacks three minutes of the half-hour. [half-hour.”]
The private door opened, and at a command from the frantic secretary they both arose eagerly and went inside. Cyrus Girard was standing behind his desk waiting for them, watch in hand.
“Hello!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Where’s Jones?”
Parrish and Van Buren exchanged a smile. If Jones were snagged somewhere so much the better.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” spoke up the secretary, who had been lingering near the door; “Mr. Jones is in Chicago.”
“What’s he doing there?” demanded Cyrus Girard in astonishment.
“He went out to handle the matter of those silver shipments.