Our Mr Wrenn | Page 6

with quick
head-shakes like those of palsy, to raise his smelly cigarette to his
mouth. Midway in this slow gesture the memory of his wrongs again
overpowered him. He flung his right hand back on the table, scattering
cigarette ashes, jerked back his head with the irritated patience of a
nervous martyr, then waved both hands about spasmodically, while he
snarled, with his cheaply handsome smooth face more flushed than
usual:
"Sure! You can just bet your bottom dollar I let him see from the way I
looked at him that I wasn't going to stand for no more monkey business.
You bet I did!... I'll fix him, I will. You just watch me. (Hey, Drubel,
got any lemon merang? Bring me a hunk, will yuh?) Why, Wrenn, that
cross-eyed double-jointed fat old slob, I'll slam him in the slats so hard
some day--I will, you just watch my smoke. If it wasn't for that messy
wife of mine--I ought to desert her, and I will some day, and--"
"Yuh." Mr. Wrenn was curt for a second.... "I know how it is, Charley.
But you'll get over it, honest you will. Say, I've got some news. Some
land that my dad left me has sold for nearly a thousand plunks. By the
way, this lunch is on me. Let me pay for it, Charley."
Charley promised to let him pay, quite readily. And, expanding, said:
"Great, Wrenn! Great! Lemme congratulate you. Don't know anybody
I'd rather've had this happen to. You're a meek little baa-lamb, but
you've got lots of stuff in you, old Wrennski. Oh say, by the way, could.
you let me have fifty cents till Saturday? Thanks. I'll pay it back sure.
By golly! you're the only man around the office that 'preciates what a
double duck-lined old fiend old Goglefogle is, the old--"
"Aw, gee, Charley, I wish you wouldn't jump on Guilfogle so hard.
He's always treated me square."
"Gogie--square? Yuh, he's square just like a hoop. You know it, too,
Wrenn. Now that you've got enough money so's you don't need to be
scared about the job you'll realize it, and you'll want to soak him,
same's I do. _Say!_" The impulse of a great idea made him gleefully
shake his fist sidewise. "Say! Why _don't_ you soak him? They bank
on you at the Souvenir Company. Darn' sight more than you realize,
lemme tell you. Why, you do about half the stock-keeper's work, sides

your own. Tell you what you do. You go to old Goglefogle and tell him
you want a raise to twenty-five, and want it right now. Yes, by golly,
_thirty!_ You're worth that, or pretty darn' near it, but 'course old
Goglefogle'll never give it to you. He'll threaten to fire you if you say a
thing more about it. You can tell him to go ahead, and then where'll he
be? Guess that'll call his bluff some!"
"Yes, but, Charley, then if Guilfogle feels he can't pay me that
much--you know he's responsible to the directors; he can't do
everything he wants to--why, he'll just have to fire me, after I've talked
to him like that, whether he wants to or not. And that'd leave us--that'd
leave them--without a sales clerk, right in the busy season."
"Why, sure, Wrenn; that's what we want to do. If you go it 'd leave 'em
without just about two men. Bother 'em like the deuce. It 'd bother Mr.
Mortimer X. Y. Guglefugle most of all, thank the Lord. He wouldn't
know where he was at--trying to break in a man right in the busy
season. Here's your chance. Come on, kid; don't pass it up."
"Oh gee, Charley, I can't do that. You wouldn't want me to try to hurt
the Souvenir Company after being there for--lemme see, it must be
seven years."
"Well, maybe you like to get your cute little nose rubbed on the
grindstone! I suppose you'd like to stay on at nineteen per for the rest of
your life."
"Aw, Charley, don't get sore; please don't! I'd like to get off, all
right--like to go traveling, and stuff like that. Gee! I'd like to wander
round. But I can't cut out right in the bus--"
"But can't you see, you poor nut, you won't be leaving 'em--they'll
either pay you what they ought to or lose you."
"Oh, I don't know about that, Charley.
"Charley was making up for some uncertainty as to his own logic by
beaming persuasiveness, and Mr. Wrenn was afraid of being
hypnotized. "No, no!" he throbbed, rising.
"Well, all right!" snarled Charley, "if you like to be Gogie's goat.... Oh,
you're all right, Wrennski. I suppose you had ought to stay, if you feel
you got to.... Well, so long. I've got