The shop was
very quiet after the activity of the street that had so bewildered him. It
was, he thought, like a retreat, almost like a church when you went to the
door and looked in on a week day. He had done that once and had liked the
empty silent church better than he did a church with a preacher and a lot
of people in it. He had told his wife about the matter. "It was like the
shop in the evening when I've got a job of work done and the boy has gone
home," he had said.
The harness maker looked out through the open door of his shop and saw Tom
Butterworth and Steve Hunter going along Main Street, engaged in earnest
conversation. Steve had a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth and Tom
had on a fancy vest. He thought again of the money he had lost in the
plant-setting machine venture and was furious. The noon hour was spoiled
and he was almost glad when Jim came back from his mid-day meal.
The position in which he found himself in the shop amused Jim Gibson. He
chuckled to himself as he waited on the customers who came in, and as he
worked at the bench. One day when he came back along Main Street from
the noon meal, he decided to try an experiment. "If I lose my job what
difference does it make?" he asked himself. He stopped at a saloon and had
a drink of whisky. When he got to the shop he began to scold his employer,
to threaten him as though he were his apprentice.
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