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Updated: May 25, 2025
Bonbright walked painfully to Lightener's office. "Well?" said Lightener. "I can do it I'll harden to it," Bonbright said. "Huh!... Take off those overalls.... Boy, go to Mr. Foote's locker and fetch his things...." "Am am I discharged?" "No," said Lightener, bestowing no word of commendation. Men had little commendation from him by word of mouth. He let actions speak for him.
Bonbright Foote seems to be causing his family anxiety," he said. "He's disappeared.... I guess they think you carried him off. Did you go somewhere with him in his car last night?" "You have no right to question me, Mr. Lightener." "Don't I know it?
There was a spirit among the workers totally lacking in her former place of employment; there was an attitude in superiors, and most notable in Malcolm Lightener himself, which was so different from that of Mr. Foote that it seemed impossible. Foote held himself aloof from contacts with his help and his business. Malcolm Lightener was everywhere, interested in everything, mixing into everything.
Lightener stood and looked after Bonbright. His granite face did not alter; no light or shade passed over it. Not even in his gray eyes could a hint of his thoughts be read. Simply he stood and looked after Bonbright, outwardly as emotionless as a block of the rock that he resembled. Then he walked to his office, sat down at his desk, selected and lighted a cigar, and tilted back in his chair.
When he gave a man a task to perform that man knew he was being complimented.... But he knew it in no other way. "That's the way a laborer feels," said Lightener.... "You got it multiplied. That's because you had to jam his whole life's experience into a day...." "Poor devils!" said Bonbright.
New buildings had been under construction, but before they were completed and equipped their added production was eaten up and the factory was no nearer to keeping supply abreast with demand than it had been in the beginning. Lightener was forced to make contracts with other firms for parts of his cars. From one plant he contracted for bodies, from another for wheels.
It was characteristic of Lightener that the room in the house which was peculiarly his own was called by him his office, not his den, not the library.... There were two interests in Lightener's life his family and his business, and he stirred them together in a quaintly granite sort of way. For the second time that evening Bonbright stood hesitating in a doorway.
Lightener was on the wire. "This is Rangar, Mr. Lightener Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. Mr. Foote wished me to inquire if you had seen Mr. Bonbright between six o'clock last night and this morning." "No.... Why does he ask me? What's the matter?" "Mr. Foote says Bonbright stayed with you one night, and thought he might have done so again. Mr. Foote is worried, sir.
We can't see anything but our own side of it." "Come now, Lightener, I'm fair-minded. I've even given some study to the motives of men." "And you're writing a book." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Darn it all, why couldn't you and Hilda have taken to each other!..." Lightener stopped, and stared at his desk. Perhaps it was not too late yet. Bonbright's marriage had been no success; Bonbright was young; and it was not thinkable that he would not recover from that wound in time to marry again. Of course he would.... Then why should he not marry Hilda? Not the least reason in the world.
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