The Clarion | Page 9

spirit, Dad," said the junior,
smiling.
"Noticed that already, have you? Well, I'm holding my own, Boyee. Up
to date, old age hasn't scratched me with his claws to any noticeable
extent--is that the way it goes?--see 'Familiar Quotations.' I'm getting to

be a regular book-worm, Hal. Shakespeare, R.L.S., Kipling, Arnold
Bennett, Hall Caine--all the high-brows. And I get 'em, too. Soak 'em
right in. I love it! Tell me, who's this Balzac? An agent was in
yesterday trying to make me believe that he invented culture. What
about him? I'm pretty hot on the culture trail. Look out, or I'll overhaul
you."
"You won't have to go very far or fast. I've got only smatterings." But
the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost upon the
shrewd father.
"Not so much that you'll think Worthington dull and provincial?"
"Oh, I dare say I shall find it a very decent little place."
But here Hal touched another pride and loyalty, quite as genuine as that
which Dr. Surtaine felt for his son.
"Little place!" he cried. "Two hundred thousand of the livest people on
God's earth. A gen-u-wine American city if there ever was one."
"Evidently it suits you, sir."
"Couldn't suit better if I'd had it made to order," chuckled the Doctor.
"And I did pretty near make it over to order. It was a dead-and-alive
town when we opened up here. Didn't care much about my business,
either. Now we're the biggest thing in town. Why Certina is the
cross-mark that shows where Worthington is on the map. The business
is sim-plee BOOMING." The word exploded in rapture. "Nothing like
it ever known in the proprietary trade. Wait till you see the shop."
"That will be soon, won't it, sir? I think I've loafed quite long enough."
"You're only twenty-five," his father defended him. "It isn't as if you'd
been idling. Your four years abroad have been just so much capital.
Educational capital, I mean. I've got plenty of the other kind, for both
of us. You don't need to go into the business unless you want to."

"Being an American, I suppose I've got to go to work at something."
"Not necessarily."
"You don't want me to live on you all my life, though, I suppose."
"Well, I don't want you to want me to want you to," returned the other,
laughing. "But there's no hurry."
"To tell the truth, I'm rather bored with doing nothing. And if I can be
of any use to you in the business--"
"You're ready to resume the partnership," his father concluded the
sentence for him. "That was the foundation of it all; the old days when I
did the 'spieling' and you took in the dollars. How quick your little
hands were! Can you remember it? The smelly smoke of the torches,
and the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below. And to
think what has grown out of it. God, Boyee! It's a miracle," he exulted.
"It isn't very clear in my memory. I used to get pretty sleepy, I
remember," said the son, smiling.
"Poor Boyee! Sometimes I hated the life, for you. But there was
nobody to leave you with; and you were all I had. Anyway, it's turned
out well, hasn't it?"
"That remains to be seen for me, doesn't it? I'm rather at the start of
things."
"Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and
the world for a playground."
"One gets tired of playing. And of globe-trotting."
"Good! Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?"
"How can I tell, sir? I haven't spent two weeks altogether in the place
since I entered college eight years ago."

"Did it ever strike you that I'd carefully planned to keep you away from
here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at
summer places?"
"Yes."
"You've never spoken of it."
"No."
"Good boy! Now I'll tell you why. I wanted to be absolutely established
before I brought you back here. Not in business, alone. That came long
ago. There have been obstacles, in other ways. They're all overcome.
To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I,
Hal. Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?"
"Rather more like a freshman entering college," said the other, laughing.
"It isn't the town, it's the business that I have misgivings about."
"Misgivings? How's that?" asked the father quickly.
"What I can do in it."
"Oh, that. My doubts are whether it's the best thing for you."
"Don't you want me to go into it, Dad?"
"Of course I want you with me, Boyee. But--well, frank and flat, I don't
know whether it's genteel enough for you."
"Genteel?" The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful