ten like the town cash book?" asked Evan, turning his
attention, from habit, to the work before him.

It is singular how soon a bankboy learns to give work or the discussion
of work precedence of everything else. He will go out on the verandah
at a party, with some of his confreres, and discuss banking until he
forgets the prettiest girl at the dance. He loves to flirt with his
work at a distance; at close range it fascinates but does not charm.

Watson laughed briefly.

"The general idea is the same," he said; "but there are a hundred
extras. It's the details of the city cash book, and of all other city
routine, that get your goat. It's not so much the quality of the work
as the quantity that eats you up. Believe me, kid, you're never done."

Realization only comes with contact. Watson led the new man back to
the cash-book desk, and proceeded to give him an outline of the work.
Evan's vision swayed. At first he was unable to formulate an
intelligent question. When he began asking Bill said, apologetically:

"Sorry, kid, I'm not balanced yet. You'll have to take another lesson
again. Maybe they won't put you on this post after all. No use of
wasting good energy till you have to."

Therewith Bill grappled with his big red-backed book, and looked
neither to the right hand nor to the left.

Toward nine o'clock the boys began coming into the office in
instalments. As they passed Nelson, who was leaning against a desk,
some of them nodded, recognizing a comrade, but most of them passed by
with merely a glance. Men were coming and going every week.

Evan had speculated on the sensation he would make as he--a real, live
pro-accountant--walked into the city office. Where was the sensation
now? Within himself. He experienced an involuntary chill; the
machinery of which he constituted a cog was beginning to grind. He
should not have been so susceptible to those petty influences that
impregnate a new environment; but he was below normal health by reason
of work and worry endured at Banfield, and inclined to look on the dark
side. Instead of going to work in a city bank he should have taken a
trip to the country and engaged with a farmer to plant onions or
shingle a barn.

At the front of the office there were two desks. Evan asked one of the
juniors, of which there were three, who occupied these desks.

"The accountant and assistant-accountant," was the answer.

Branch men were familiar with the sign