"
"I am ready to commence right now, sir," responded Dick, getting up with
his usual alacrity.
"Good. I like to hear a lad talk that way. But by the way, you have not
asked anything about wages."
"I'm willing to leave that entirely to you, sir. I am sure you will pay
me all I am worth to the bank," said Dick, simply.
He could not have made a more diplomatic reply had he been a schemer
instead of a frank single-minded lad.
"Good again. I begin to think that it was a fine thing for all of us
that Charles overslept so frightfully yesterday. We paid him eight
dollars a week to begin with, Richard."
"Yes, sir. I shall be very glad to receive that, if you consider that I
can fill the bill."
"But, for the last two months we have been paying Charles ten. Now, I am
of the opinion that you are going to be even more valuable in the start
than he was at the finish of his banking career, so I shall instruct the
bookkeeper to put you on the payroll at ten dollars. That will do for
the present, Richard. I am going to take a personal interest in your
progress. I knew your father, my boy, and respected him highly."
"Thank you, sir," said Dick, as he withdrew; and there were tears in his
eyes which he had to wink very hard to dry out; but it was not the fact
that he was to receive such splendid wages at the beginning of his
business career that affected him half so much as this constant allusion
to the honorable name his father had left behind as a heritage for his
son.
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