mart young man
would get a salary of five thousand a year, plus his commissions to start
with. If he made good the salary would go up in proportion. In fact the
sky would be the limit. He offered the post to Philip Lambert.

Phil laid down his soup spoon and stared at his companion. After a moment
he remarked that it was rather unusual, to say the least, to offer a
salary like that to an utter greenhorn in a business as technical as
brokerage, and that he was afraid he was not in the least fitted for the
position in question.

"That is my look out," snapped Mr. Cressy. "Do I look like a born fool,
Philip Lambert? You don't suppose I am jumping in the dark do you? I have
gone to some pains to look up your record in college. I found out you
made good no matter what you attempted, on the gridiron, in the
classroom, everywhere else. I've been picking men for years and I've gone
on the principle that a man who makes good in one place will make good in
another if he has sufficient incentive."

"I suppose the five thousand is to be considered in the light of an
incentive," said Phil.

"It is five times the incentive and more than I had when I started out,"
grunted his host. "What more do you want?"

"Nothing. I don't want so much. I couldn't earn it. And in any case I
cannot consider any change at present. I have gone in with my father."

"So I understood. But that is not a hard and fast arrangement. A young
man like you has to look ahead. Your father won't stand in the way of
your bettering yourself." Harrison Cressy spoke with conviction. Well he
might. Though Philip had not known it his companion had spent an hour in
earnest conversation with his father that morning. Harrison Cressy knew
his ground there.

"Go ahead, Mr. Cressy," Stewart Lambert had said at the close of the
interview. "You have my full permission to offer the position to the
boy and he has my full permission to accept it. He is free to go
tomorrow if he cares to. If it is for his happiness it is what his
mother and I want."

But the younger Lambert was yet to be reckoned with.

"It is a hard and fast arrangement so far as I am concerned," he said
quietly now. "Dad can fire me. I shan't fire myself."

Mr. Cressy made a savage lunge at a fly that had ventured to light on the
sugar bowl, not knowing it was for the time being Millionaire Cressy's
sugar bowl. He hated being balked, even temporarily. He had supposed the
hardest sledding would be over