The Adventures of Bobby Orde Part 30

Bobby looked up absorbedly.

"She's going to in just a second--you wait," he muttered.

A moment later he lifted the locked form in triumph. It held together and it was flat. Immediately Johnny's nearly extinct enthusiasm flamed up.

"Stick her in!" he cried. "Come on, we can show Papa a sample to-night.

How many an hour do you suppose we can print on her, Bobby?"

"I don't know," replied Bobby.

They inserted the form, slipped a blank envelope in the corner and were ready for the first trial.

"It won't be even on the paper," said Bobby, "but we can fix that later."

He pulled down and back the long lever and the two heads b.u.mped together over the result. One side of the legend was very heavy and black and clear, but the other was almost invisible.

"Oh, snakes!" cried Johnny in disappointment.

"Oh, that's all right," reasoned Bobby out of his experience with the toy press. "All it needs is paper underneath."

But paper underneath proved inadequate. It was impossible with paper to establish the nice gradation necessary to equalize the pressure. And then, also, too much paper made too deep an impression.

At the failure of this tried expedient even Bobby's patience ran short for the time being.

"Come on over to my house," suggested Johnny crossly. "The crowd's coming. I got boxing gloves for Christmas too, but I bet they're no good either. I bet they rip first thing."

Sore at heart and in glum silence the two marched around the corner to the Englishes'.

Here already in the cold third story were Grace Jones and Martin Drake, skipping about in a game of hop-scotch to keep warm. Shortly May and Carter arrived together and Caroline ascended from her own room where she had been sewing. At sight of the boxing gloves May and Morton set up a shout.

"Nope," vetoed Johnny, "Bobby and I are going to try them first!"

The youngsters were at first a little awkward with the unusual-sized fists, but soon forgot a detail as trivial as that. Neither knew the first principles of hitting. Round-arm blows with the head lowered were first choice, of which a good ninety per cent. went wild. The other ten naturally had little force, but there was a great deal of action. In this game Bobby stood no disadvantage with Johnny. After the first few seconds, finding himself, to his surprise, still unhurt, he sailed in with some confidence. Accidently Johnny ran square against his extended fist. It jarred Johnny considerably, and made that youth exceedingly eager to get even. Shortly he succeeded. The pair warmed up. Affairs began to get serious. In a brisk though wild rally they clinched, and in a moment were rolling over and over on the floor, pummelling vigorously.

But immediately Carter jerked them apart.

"Here, that's no way to box. Keep your feet. Here, May, give us a little help."

They pulled the contestants to their feet. Johnny and Bobby were very mussed up and dusty. Johnny's nose was bleeding slightly; Bobby's eye was a trifle swelled. The instant their captors released them, they went at it again, hammer and tongs. They were certainly not angry as enemies are angry, but as certainly for the time being, in the sense that each was grimly resolved on victory, they had ceased to be friends.

How long the combat might have lasted it would be impossible to say.

Bobby had never before used his fists, while the aggressive Johnny, at public school, was the hero of many fights. But as long as Carter insisted on no rough-and-tumble this fact gave the elder boy little advantage. The damage that two light-weights can inflict on each other with round-arm blows is inconsiderable, and Bobby was of the sort that punishment merely renders obstinate. Probably sheer lack of breath would in time have called the battle a draw, but all at once Bobby had an idea. So illuminating and sudden was it that for an instant he forgot what he was doing. Johnny closed on him like a tiger beating him with both fists as hard as he could hit. Even then Bobby's thought was not of defence but of explanation.

"Hold on! hold on! quit!" he kept on crying in expostulation. "Wait a minute! I got it!"

It is doubtful if Johnny heard him. Before Carter and May could stop him he had inflicted more damage than the rest of the fight had produced.

Bobby's nose too was bleeding, and a huge red b.u.mp was swelling on his forehead when finally he was freed.

However, he was not even aware of those trifles.

"Don't you know those two screws--" he began eagerly to Johnny.

But that young gentleman, panting, was not yet emerged from the red haze of combat.

"I licked!" he cried. "Didn't I lick? He quit! He hollered 'nuff, didn't he? I licked the stuffing out of him!"

"O shut up!" said May contemptuously; "or I'll lick the stuffing out of you."

Bobby, practically oblivious to the meaning of this exchange, had stripped off his gloves and had advanced, eager to finish his explanation.

"Johnny, I just thought!" said he. "You remember those two thumb screws under the platen? I bet you if you turn those, they'll regulate the pressure. Let's go over and try it!"

Johnny looked at Bobby uncertainly. He drew a deep breath, then his round, cheerful grin broke over his face.

"I guess I didn't lick you after all, old socks," said he. "I don't know what you're talking about. Go on try your old press. I'm sick of her."

Bobby washed his bruised face and went home. Sure enough, the thumb screws did regulate the pressure. Within a half-hour he was back at the Englishes'. The boxing gloves were still in commission. Morton was dancing around and around May, slapping her with his open glove first on one side the face, then on the other. The girl, in spite of her strength, agility and superior age was as awkward as are most girls at hitting with their fists. She made short angry rushes at the dodging Morton who slipped easily in and out of her guard. He was getting even for a long tyranny. Finally May stopped short and stamped her foot with vexation. Her face was very red and she actually had tears in her eyes.

"Oh!" she cried. "You wait 'till I get hold of you, you miserable little thing!"

At that the boxing ended. Bobby drew Johnny one side. "Look there!" said he with pardonable pride. "Show that to your papa. I bet he can't tell it from the regular printers. Look out; it's wet yet."

Johnny gazed with awe on the perfect production. The next instant all his dead enthusiasm leaped to life.

"I bet we can print the whole thousand in one morning!" he cried gleefully, "And then there's the letter-heads, and bill-heads and May's cards--and perhaps your father and Carter's will give us jobs--and--"

They clattered down the stairs to the tune of Johnny's business expansions.

XX

THE PARTNERS

The thousand envelopes were printed and delivered. Mr. English expressed himself as entirely satisfied, and allowed the new firm to experiment on bill heads. Mr. Orde promised an order of more envelopes when these were finished.

Johnny's commercial instincts were thoroughly aroused. He saw visions of wealth beyond the dreams of wood-box-filling or street-sprinkling with the garden hose in summer. In that community even Johnny English had to earn his own pocket money. Bobby, too, entered into the game with enthusiasm--for over a week. Then he grew tired of the mechanical repet.i.tion of that which he had acquired so painfully. It no longer interested him to set the type, to lock the form, to ink and clean the ink plates. He had carried these things to their last refinement of skill. As for the actual printing--the endless insetting of paper, pulling down on the lever, removing the paper--this he could no longer stand for more than half an hour at a time. Then a deep lethargy seized his every faculty. His mind sank to stupor. Time no longer possessed dimensions, but blew into a vast Present which was never going to cease.

If he kept at it a half-hour after this condition manifested itself he emerged from the ordeal as tired and sleepy as though he had undergone hard physical labour. It was more than mere boredom; it was a revolt of the soul.

At first his loyalty to the firm and his sense of duty drove him on.

Then gradually he relinquished the printing to Johnny. That young man could cheerfully have stuck to the press twelve hours a day, if he had been permitted. Each printed bit of paper laid aside on the growing pile to his left represented just that much more pocket money.

So, strangely enough, the relative position of the two boys toward the work in hand was reversed. At first, when the mechanical difficulties seemed insurmountable, Bobby's perseverance had been inexhaustible, while Johnny was a dozen times inclined to let the whole problem go smash. Now, when the task of feeding into the press the thousand necessary to fill orders seemed endless, Johnny's patience rose more than adequate to the occasion, while Bobby's spirit shrank at the mere size of it.

Finally matters adjusted themselves so that Bobby saw to the alignment, the perfection of the impression, all the rest of getting ready; then Johnny took hold.