The next battle Mr. Wrenn lost. He had demanded a monthly holiday for his stenographer. Mr. Guilfogle pointed out that she'd merely be the worse off for a holiday, that it 'd make her discontented, that it was a kindness to her to keep her mind occupied. Mr. Wrenn was, however, granted a new typewriter, in a manner which revealed the fact that the Souvenir Company was filled with almost too much mercy in permitting an employee to follow his own selfish and stubborn desires.
You cannot trust these employees. Mr. Wrenn was getting so absorbed in his work that he didn't even act as though it was a favor when Mr. Guilfogle allowed him to have his letters to the trade copied by carbon paper instead of having them blurred by the wet tissue-paper of a copy-book. The manager did grant the request, but he was justly indignant at the curt manner of the rascal, whereupon our bumptious revolutionist, our friend to anarchists and red-headed artists, demanded a "raise" and said that he didn't care a hang if the [qualified] letters never went out. The kindness of chiefs! For Mr. Guilfogle apologized and raised the madman's wage from seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week to his former nineteen dollars. [He had expected eighteen dollars; he had demanded twenty-two dollars and fifty cents; he was worth on the labor market from twenty-five to thirty dollars; while the profit to the Souvenir Company from his work was about sixty dollars minus whatever salary he got.] Not only that. Mr. Guilfogle slapped him on the back and said: "You're doing good work, old man. It's fine. I just don't want you to be too reckless."
That night Wrenn worked till eight.
After his raise he could afford to go to the theater, since he was not saving money for travel. He wrote small letters to Istra and read the books he believed she would approve--a Paris Baedeker and the second volume of Tolstoi's War and Peace, which he bought at a second-hand book-stall for five cents. He became interested in popular and inaccurate French and English histories, and secreted any amount of footnote anecdotes about Guy Fawkes and rush-lights and the divine right of kings. He thought almost every night about making friends, which he intended--just as much as ever--to do as soon as Sometime arrived.
On the day on which one of the Southern merchants wrote him about his son--"fine young fellow, sir--has every chance of rising to a lieutenancy on the Atlanta police force"--Mr. Wrenn's eyes were moist. Here was a friend already. Sure. He would make friends. Then there was the cripple with the Capitol Corner News and Souvenir Stand in Austin, Texas. Mr. Wrenn secreted two extra Dixieland Ink-wells and a Yale football banner and sent them to the cripple for his brothers, who were in the Agricultural College.