He was a boy of seventeen, with a pert nose and a pasty complexion. He had put on his hat with a backward tilt that displayed his bang. He was the son of a millionnaire stockholder, and was on the threshold of his business career. He panted for consideration, and he had found, during an experience of six months, that most consideration was to be won from the newest men.
"What's up now, George?" he asked, familiarly. He twitched his narrow little shoulders as he teetered back and forth on his toes. "Old man on the rampage some more? He's had it pretty bad for the last three weeks."
Fairchild was a man well on in the fifties. He had a quiet, self-contained manner, a smooth forehead, a gray moustache. His general trustworthiness was highly esteemed by Brainard, who generally treated him with civility and sometimes almost with consideration. He had his privileges. A member of the board of directors in the Brainard interest, he would be given the opportunity to resign whenever some especially dubious piece of business was looming up, with the certainty of re-election within the year. He was too old to tear himself up by the roots, and too valuable to be allowed, in any event, the radical boon of transplantation. Of course he paid for such a concession; he acted as a buffer between Brainard and the more pathetic of the stockholders, and now, as we see, he was summoned to deal with a domestic crisis.
"My dear girl," Ogden presently heard him saying in a dry, cautious, and yet somewhat parental tone, "you know what his position is. Not in the church; no, I don't mean that. He is only a policy clerk in that insurance office, at ten dollars a week, probably--hardly enough for him to live on decently, alone. Yes, I know he gets more from the choir, but even that--"
Ogden stopped one ear by propping his elbow on his ledger and putting his hand to his head, and went on with his writing as well as he could. But he had left the Underground for St. Asaph's; he was busy no longer with notes for collection, but with the notes--the melting tenor notes--of the all-admired Vibert. His fellow--clerks noiselessly retired, and a long train of choristers slowly made their way through the long aisle the others had left vacant. Among them Vibert--tall, dark, hard, and cruel; an angel, possibly; but if so, surely one of the fallen. And a little girl of eighteen, whose blue eyes showed out from under her fluffy blond locks, and whose lips were parted in a radiant, reverent smile, steadied a trembling hand on the back of a pew and looked after him with a fond, open, and intense regard that was a perfect epitome of love.
