Youth Challenges | Page 3

Rangar, he was content.
He drew the salary that would have accompanied those other titles,
possessed in an indirect sort of way the authority, and yet managed to
remain disentangled from the responsibilities. Had he suddenly
vanished the elder Foote would have been left suspended in rarefied
heights between heaven and his business, lacking direct contact with
the mills and machine shops and foundries; yet, doubtless, would have
been unable to realize that the loss of Rangar had left him so. Rangar
was a competent, efficient man, if peculiar in his ambitions.
"Your father," said he, "has asked me to show you through the plant."
"Thank you--yes," said Bonbright, rising.
They went out, passing from the old, the family, wing of the office
building, into the larger, newer, general offices, made necessary by the
vastly increased business of the firm. Here, in a huge room, were
bookkeepers, stenographers, clerks, filing cabinets, desks,
typewriters--with several cubicles glassed off for the more important
employees and minor executives.
"We have tried," said Rangar, "to retain as far as possible the old
methods and systems. Your father, Mr. Foote, is conservative. He
clings to the ways of his father and his grandfather."
"I remember," said Bonbright, "when we had no typewriting
machines."
"We had to come to them," said Rangar, with a note of regret. "Axles
compelled us. But we have never taken up with these new contraptions
--fads--like phonographs to dictate to, card indices, loose-leaf systems,
adding machines, and the like. Of course it requires more clerks and

stenographers, and possibly we are a bit slower than some. Your father
says, however, that he prefers conducting his business as a gentleman
should, rather than to make a mere machine of it. His idea," said
Rangar, "of a gentleman in business is one who refuses to make use of
abbreviations in his correspondence."
Bonbright was looking about the busy room, conscious that he was
being covertly studied by every occupant of it. It made him
uncomfortable, uneasy.
"Let's go on into the shops," he said, impatiently.
They turned, and encountered in the aisle a girl with a stenographer's
notebook in her hand; indeed, Bonbright all but stepped on her. She
was a slight, tiny thing, not thin, but small. Her eyes met Bonbright's
eyes and she grinned. No other word can describe it. It was not an
impertinent grin, nor a familiar grin, nor a COMMON grin. It was
spontaneous, unstudied--it lay at the opposite end of the scale from
Bonbright Foote VI's smile. Somehow the flash of it COMFORTED
Bonbright. His sensations responded to it. It was a grin that radiated
with well wishes for all the world. Bonbright smiled back, awkwardly,
and bobbed his head as she stepped aside for him to pass.
"What a grin!" he said, presently.
"Oh," said Rangar. "Yes--to be sure. The Girl with the Grin--that's what
they call her in the office. She's always doing it. Your father hasn't
noticed. I hope he doesn't, for I'm sure he wouldn't like it."
"As if," said Bonbright to himself, "she were happy--and wanted
everybody else to be."
"I'm sure I don't know," said Rangar. "She's competent."
They passed outside and through a covered passageway into the older
of the shops. Bonbright was not thinking about the shops, but about the
girl. She was the only thing he had encountered that momentous
morning that had interested him, the only thing upon which Bonbright

Foote, Incorporated, had not set the stamp of its repressing personality.
He tried to visualize her and her smile that he might experience again
that sensation of relief, of lightened spirit. In a measure he was able to
do so. Her mouth was large, he saw--no small mouth could have
managed that grin. She was not pretty, but, somehow, attractive. Her
eyes were bully; intelligent, humorous sort of eyes, he decided.
"Bet she's a darn nice kid," he concluded, boyishly. His father would
have been shocked at a thought expressed in such words.
"The business has done wonders these last five years," said Rangar,
intruding on Bonbright's thoughts. "Five years ago we employed less
than a thousand hands; to-day we have more than five thousand on the
payroll. Another few years and we shall have ten thousand."
"Axles?" asked Bonbright, mechanically.
"Axles," replied Rangar.
"Father doesn't approve of them--but they must be doing considerable
for the family bank account."
Rangar shot a quick glance at the boy, a glance with reproof in it for
such a flippancy. Vaguely he had heard that this young man had done
things not expected from a Foote; had, for instance, gone in for
athletics at the university. It was reported he had actually allowed
himself to be carried once on the shoulders of a cheering mob of
students! There were other rumors, also,