He said nothing about retiring; he did not think about it very clearly; but he kept up his absurdly grave ‘training’; and he was giving Paul Popple more experience in accounting and sales.

‘‘F anything ever happened to me, ought to be somebody else could kind of take charge — just temporarily,’ he said to Paul.

In one bright idea he had a regrettable failure.

Among the less desirable features of the Triumph shop, along with rats, high insurance rates and a smell of sewer gas, was the continued presence of his near-cousins, Cal and Mac Tillery. Fred had, briefly, been too much of a coward to fire them and to risk receiving the hurt letter which their sire, Cousin Enos, would inevitably write.

He had tried them at cleaning cars, until too many owners complained of wet upholstery, and of running boards abloom with soaked cigarette butts; he had tried them at selling gasoline, until he noticed that with each gallon they donated five minutes of bright backwoods chatter about the weather —‘Hot, I’ll say it’s hot. Oh boy, is it hot today — say, it was hot when I woke up this morning — oh boy, was it hot!’ Painting did not seem suited to the particular talents of Cal and Mac; they broke spray guns and made the car bodies contrasts of gummy spots with patches entirely bare. At last Fred had put them to packing and toting boxes in the supply department, which they did fairly well, except when they dropped the boxes, lost them or used them as targets for tobacco juice.

In whatever job they might be, they told all colleagues and all customers, ‘We’re Fred Cornplow’s own cousins. He’s learned how to get away with it, but say, is that guy a hick! Oh boy!’

Fred begged of them, tenderly, ‘Boys, now summer’s coming, don’t you suppose your dad will need you on his farm?’

‘His what?’

‘His farm. In West Virginia. From the government.’

‘Oh. That. Oh, Dad never got there. He run into a cousin of Ma’s, on the way, that’s got a wild animal farm, and he and Ma and the kids are staying there to help train the tigers.’

‘Well, well, Cal! That’s fine, Mac! That must be mighty interesting! Don’t you want to join him? I hear tigers make fine pets. I’d be glad to pay your railroad fares.’

‘Naw. Dad wrote me a postcard; he said Cousin Albert was an awful tightwad and gives ’em rotten grub. He got so sore he prett’ near left Cousin Albert flat. No, we like it all right here, Fred. We’ll stick by you.’

By Sara, Fred sent word to Gene Silga that if he could use one or two fine young men, just the sort of real proletarians to whom Gene wished to hand the control of the American government, Fred could supply them, and he might even contribute to the Coheeze.

Eugene sent back jeering word: ‘The Soviets and their fellow travellers don’t want shiftless bums any more than the capitalists do; in fact, not being sentimental like the soppy American capitalists, the Bolsheviks give slackers a choice between working and losing citizenship.’