In the corner which had been his home for eight years Mr. Wrenn could not devise any new and yet more improved arrangement of the wire baskets and clips and desk reminders, so he cleaned a pen, blew some gray eraser-dust from under his iron ink-well standard, and decided that his desk was in order; reflecting: He'd been there a long time. Now he could never come back to it, no matter how much he wanted to.... How good the manager had been to him. Gee! he hadn't appreciated how considerut Guilfogle was!
He started down the corridor on a round of farewells to the boys. "Too bad he hadn't never got better acquainted with them, but it was too late now. Anyway, they were such fine jolly sports; they'd never miss a stupid guy like him."
Just then he met them in the corridor, all of them except Guilfogle, headed by Rabin, the traveling salesman, and Charley Carpenter, who was bearing a box of handkerchiefs with a large green-and-crimson-paper label.
"Gov'nor Wrenn," orated Charley, "upon this suspicious occasion we have the pleasure of showing by this small token of our esteem our 'preciation of your untiring efforts in the investigation of Mortimer R. Gugglegiggle of the Graft Trust and-"Say, old man, joking aside, we're mighty sorry you're going and--uh--well, we'd like to give you something to show we're--uh--mighty sorry you're going. We thought of a box of cigars, but you don't smoke much; anyway, these han'k'chiefs'll help to show--Three cheers for Wrenn, fellows!"
Afterward, by his desk, alone, holding the box of handkerchiefs with the resplendent red-and-green label, Mr. Wrenn began to cry.
He was lying abed at eight-thirty on a morning of late June, two weeks after leaving the Souvenir Company, deliberately hunting over his pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously depressed in the soul. He would have got up had there been anything to get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty. For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already voluntarily given up. So there are men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide.
Nearly every morning he had driven himself from bed and had finished shaving before he was quite satisfied that he didn't have to get to the office on time. As he wandered about during the day he remarked with frequency, "I'm scared as teacher's pet playing hookey for the first time, like what we used to do in Parthenon." All proper persons were at work of a week-day afternoon. What, then, was he doing walking along the street when all morality demanded his sitting at a desk at the Souvenir Company, being a little more careful, to win the divine favor of Mortimer R. Guilfogle?