"You know she doesn't approve of me."

"Why, Graham!"

"Well, ask her," he said. And there was a real bitterness under
the lightness of his tone. "I'll come, of course, Mrs. Haverford.
Thank you for asking me. I haven't a lot of time. I'm a sort of
clerk down at the mill, you know."

Natalie overheard, and her eyes met Clayton's, with a glance of
malicious triumph. She had been deeply resentful that he had not
made Graham a partner at once. He remembered a conversation they
had had a few months before.

"Why should he have to start at the bottom?" she had protested.
"You have never been quite fair to him, Clay." His boyish diminutive
had stuck to him. "You expect him to know as much about the mill
now as you do, after all these years."

"Not at all. I want him to learn. That's precisely the reason why
I'm not taking him in at once."

"How much salary is he to have?"

"Three thousand a year."

"Three thousand! Why, it will take all of that to buy him a car."

"There are three cars here now; I should think he could manage."