A CANADIAN BANKCLERK

CHAPTER I.

OUR BANKER.

The Ontario village of Hometon rested. It had been doing for so many years. There, in days gone by, pioneers with bushy beards—now long out-of-date, but threatening to sprout again—had fearlessly faced the wolf-haunted forests, relying, no doubt, upon the ferocity of their own appearance to frighten off the devourer.

A few old elm trees still remained in the village, to protect it from the summer sun; and still lived also an occasional pioneer, gnarled and rugged like the old elms, to sigh and shake his head at the new civilization, and shelter whom he might from the power of its stroke.

One of these ancient fathers meandered across the main street and into a grocery store. He plucked a semi-petrified prune from its sticky environment and drew a stool up to the counter.

"Well, Dad," greeted the grocer, "what's new in the old town?"

The old gentleman worried the stolen morsel into one cheek and replied:

"Our boys keep a-leavin' on us, John; keep a-goin'."

While the grocer stood wondering whether the "keep a-goin'" referred to himself or "our boys," a customer entered.

"How d'you do, Mrs. Arling," he smiled, leaving the old man to his quid-like mouthful.

But, in the case of a lady shopper, where business interferes with the telling of a story—or anything—postpone business.

"Ah yes, Grandpa Newman," she sighed, "the town will soon be deserted."

The grey-haired man looked at her as much as to ask: "Pray, how did you manage to overhear what I was saying?" What he did ask was:

"How does his mother feel, Mrs. Arling?"

"I'm just on my way there now," replied the lady-shopper; "give me a can of pork-and-beans, will you, John?"

The grocer, whom almost everyone in town called by his first name, climbed nimbly up the side of his store and fished out the desired article. Meanwhile Mrs. Arling winked at the old man and whispered:

"He looks like a boy, Grandpa, the way he scales that shelf; but he's past forty!"

"Aye, so he is, Mary; but you both seem like chits to me."

Grandpa Newman smiled when "Mary" had gone, then shook his head and sighed. The grocer proceeded to wheedle more news out of the village information bureau.

"Who's leaving us now, Dad?" he asked.

"Young Nelson; he's goin' away out here to Mt. Alban to j'in one of them banks."

"You don't say!"

"Yes," drawled the grandsire, "it beats the Old Scratch how these youngsters have got new-fangled idears into their heads. Now, when I was a boy—"

But the observation Mrs. Arling was, a few minutes later, making to Mrs. Nelson, is more to the point:

"My dear Caroline, I just dropped in to tell you how sorry and how glad I am."

Mrs. Arling was fair, round and vivacious. The woman to whom she talked was dark and slender, but also vivacious. The latter smiled.

"It is lonesome, Mary; but you know we can't keep them home forever."

"No, indeed," agreed Mrs. Arling, "that's what I tell my silly old man when he gets to worrying about our boy, who's only twelve. Let them go—they'll be glad to come back."

"It's all very well for you to sit there and act brave," laughed Mrs. Nelson, "but wait till the day arrives."

The force of the argument told on Mrs. Arling.

"Maybe you're right, Caroline," she admitted. "But it must be a great consolation to see Evan enter such a splendid business."

"That is what consoles me, Mary. Banking is such a respectable, genteel occupation!"

The dark woman's eyes were bright; she spoke with great pride.

"You're right, Caroline, it is genteel. Bank boys get into such nice society. And they can always—you know—look so nice!"

"You know, Mary," rejoined the slender woman, "his pa almost repented giving him permission to quit school. Evan was getting along so well. He would have taken both his matric. and his second this summer; but he would go in a bank, and when a vacancy occurred so near home we thought perhaps it would be as well to let him go, in case he should not get so good a chance again."

Mrs. Arling sat in thought.

"Caroline," she said at length, "do you think Evan ever cared much about our girl?"

Mrs. Nelson blushed before one who had been a school-chum.

"I was going to mention that," she said, bashfully.

"You think there is something between them, then?"

"Why, Mary, they are only children. And yet, I often wish that Evan would some day get serious."

"Wouldn't it be lovely!"

The conversation drifted, like ocean-tide, into many fissures and along innumerable channels. The May afternoon ebbed away.

"I really must be going," said Mrs. Arling, suddenly. "Let us know how he gets along. I'm sure the whole town misses Evan, and is proud of him."

Mrs. Nelson smiled fondly.

"And we, too, are proud of Our Banker."

It was the second day of "our banker's" apprenticeship. According to the chronology of homesickness he had been in the banking business about a year. He stood at a high desk in the back end of a dark office, gazing blankly on a heap of letters addressed, or to be addressed, everywhere. An open copying-book lay at his elbow, the pages of which were smeared with indelible streaks. Clerical experts had invented that book for the purpose of recording letters, but Nelson had applied too much water, and the result of his labors was chaos; worse—oblivion.

"Just gaze on that!" cried the teller-accountant, Alfred Castle.

While Alfred gazed a pencil artist might have made a good sketch of him—if the artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner.

"I can't understand how anyone could ball things up like that," he continued.

But assertions seemed incapable of rousing Evan from his stupid lethargy. A question might help.

"Why didn't you stop before you had spoiled the whole bunch?" asked the teller sharply.

Evan swallowed.

"I kept thinking," he stammered, "that each one—"

Castle turned away impatiently, refusing to hear the speaker out. He entered his cage and closed the door, leaving Evan to his nightmare. The manager strolled back through the office.

"Where's Perry?" he asked the new junior.

"Out with the drafts, sir," replied Evan, weakly.

The manager was worthy of description also. He was short, heavy of