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He had not understood at the time, but looking back he could understand. He could see him setting type in the little printery, or scribbling endless hasty, nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk.
Just as of old she had found excuses for going up to the trembling printery, so now she felt that somehow she must seek him out. She kept wondering what he was doing at that particular moment. Was he toiling or idling? Was he with his mother? Did he still wear the same clothes, the same half-worn necktie, the same old lovable gray hat?
Sally Heffer was there at a roll-top desk, still in her little brown coat quiet, pale, her clear eyes remarkably penetrating. She turned. "Yes?" He shook pitifully,... then he sat down, holding his hat in his hands. "I'm Joe Blaine...." "Joe Blaine ... of what?" "Of the printery ... that burned...." She looked at him sharply. "So, you're the employer." "Yes, I am."
At fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed to a printery and served until he was of age. From the first he was remarkable for his firmness of moral principle and for an inflexible adherence to his convictions, no matter at what cost to himself. He soon showed, too, that he was destined for something more than a printer a man who puts in print the ideas of others that he had ideas of his own.
Evidently with this purpose in view, Paul Henkel had established a printery at New Market, Va., where books and tracts breathing a Lutheran spirit were published. Synodical colporteurs diligently canvassed them among the congregations.
They laughed together as they had not since far and far in the beginning of things. Joe leaned near. "Myra," he said, "I need an airing. Take me out and shake me out! Oh!" he stretched his arms above his head. "Have I been hibernating and is it springtime again?" Myra hesitated. "Joe." "Yes, ma'am!" "I want you to take me somewhere." "I will." "To the printery I want to see it again."
"No," said Joe, earnestly, "it's what I've got to face, Marty, and I need your backing." Marty mused miserably. "So the game's up, and you've changed, and we men can go to the dogs. Why, we can't run that printery without you. We'd go plumb to hell!" Joe changed his voice it became more commanding. "Never mind now, Marty. I want your help to figure things out."
"Aw, Myra, give me a day to steel my heart and strengthen my sinews. Wait till we come back." "And you'll get it then?" "Sure as fate." "Well just this once you'll have your way!" So they took the elevated to Seventy-sixth Street and walked through the old neighborhood to the printery.
And so for years he and his mother had boarded in a brownstone boarding-house in the quiet block west of Lexington Avenue up the street. They spent very little on themselves. In fact, Joe was too busy. He was all absorbed in the printery he worked early and late and of recent years in the stress of business his fine relationship with his mother had rather thinned out.
Hardly had Joe settled the transfer of the printery to Marty, when the rumor of the transaction swept the business. At noon men gathered in groups and whispered together as if some one had died, and one after another approached Joe with a: "Mr. Joe, is it true what the fellows say?" "Yes, Tom." "Going to leave us, Mr. Joe?" "Going, Tom." "Got to go?" "I'm afraid I have to."
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