"He was like a boy who has been caught with his hand in the jam pot," Jim
explained. "I can't think what's the matter with him. Had I been in his,
shoes I would have kicked Jim Gibson out of the shop. He told me not to
pay any attention to him and to run the shop as I pleased. Now what do you
think of that? Now what do you think of that for a man who owns his own
shop and has money in the bank? I tell you, I don't know how it is, but I
don't work for Joe any more. He works for me. Some day you come in the shop
casual-like and I'll boss him around for you. I'm telling you I don't know
how it is that it come about, but I'm the boss of the shop as sure as the
devil."
All of Bidwell was looking at itself and asking itself questions. Ed Hall,
who had been a carpenter's apprentice earning but a few dollars a week with
his master, Ben Peeler, was now foreman in the corn-cutter factory and
received a salary of twenty-five dollars every Saturday night. It was
more money than he had ever dreamed of earning in a week. On pay nights
he dressed himself in his Sunday clothes and had himself shaved at Joe
Trotter's barber shop. Then he went along Main Street, fingering the money
in his pocket and half fearing he would suddenly awaken and find it all a
dream. He went into Wymer's tobacco store to get a cigar, and old Claude
Wymer came to wait on him. On the second Saturday evening after he got his
new position, the tobacconist, a rather obsequious man, called him Mr.
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