now?"

The rawness of it made Ted wince. "Oh, I don't know," he stammered.
"I've a job half promised in Chicago."

"What doing?"

Ted laughed a short and ugly laugh. "Driving a brewery auto truck."

Jo Haley tossed his cigar dexterously to the opposite corner of his mouth
and squinted thoughtfully along its bulging sides.

"Remember that Wenzel girl that's kept books for me for the last six
years? She's leaving in a couple of months to marry a New York guy that
travels for ladies' cloaks and suits. After she goes it's nix with the
lady bookkeepers for me. Not that Minnie isn't a good, straight girl,
and honest, but no girl can keep books with one eye on a column of
figures and the other on a traveling man in a brown suit and a red
necktie, unless she's cross-eyed, and you bet Minnie ain't. The job's
yours if you want it. Eighty a month to start on, and board."

"I--can't, Jo. Thanks just the same. I'm going to try to begin all over
again, somewhere else, where nobody knows me."

"Oh yes," said Jo. "I knew a fellow that did that. After he came out he
grew a beard, and wore eyeglasses, and changed his name. Had a quick,
crisp way of talkin', and he cultivated a drawl and went west and started
in business. Real estate, I think. Anyway, the second month he was
there in walks a fool he used to know and bellows: 'Why if it ain't
Bill! Hello, Bill! I thought you was doing time yet.' That was enough.
Ted, you can black your face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some
fine day, sooner or later, somebody'll come along and blab the whole
thing. And say, the older it gets the worse it sounds, when it does come
out. Stick around here where you grew up, Ted."

Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can't figure out
why you should care how I finish."

"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned one. I wasn't ever in love with
your ma, like the guy on the stage; and I never owed your pa a cent. So
it ain't a guilty conscience. I guess it's just pure cussedness, and a
hankerin' for a new investment. I'm curious to know how'll you turn out.
You've got the makin's of what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen,
even if you did fall down once. If I'd ever had time to get married,
which I never will have, a first-class hotel bein' more worry and expense
than a Pittsburg steel magnate's whole harem, I'd have wanted somebody to
do the same for my kid. That sounds slushy, but it's straight."