check. Harvey handed it to him without comment, and at once turned back
to his books. Bob stood irresolute a moment, then turned away without
farewell.

But Archie followed him into the hall.

"I'm mighty sorry, old man," he whispered, furtively. "Did you get the
G.B.?"

"I'm going up to the mill office," replied Bob.

"Oh!" the other commiserated him. Then with an effort to see the best
side, "Still you could hardly expect to jump right into the head office
at first. I didn't much think you could hold down a job here. You see
there's too much doing here. Well, good-bye. Good luck to you, old man."

There it was again, the insistence on the responsibility, the activity,
the importance of that sleepy, stuffy little office with its two men at
work, its leisure, its aimlessness. On his way to the car-line Bob
stopped to look in at an open door. A dozen men were jumping truck loads
of boxes here and there. Another man in a peaked cap and a silesia coat,
with a pencil behind his ear and a manifold book sticking out of his
pocket shouted orders, consulted a long list, marked boxes and scribbled
in a shipping book. Dim in the background huge freight elevators rose
and fell, burdened with the mass of indeterminate things. Truck horses,
great as elephants, magnificently harnessed with brass ornaments, drew
drays, big enough to carry a small house, to the loading platform where
they were quickly laden and sent away. From an opened upper window came
the busy click of many typewriters. Order in apparent confusion, immense
activity at a white heat, great movement, the clanging of the wheels of