nd your
high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock."

"Have I ever done that?" said Harvey, uneasily.

His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "You know as
well as I do that I can't make anything of you if you don't act
straight by me. I can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but I
don't pretend to manage both you and Mama. Life's too short, anyway."

"Don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?"

"I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you
haven't been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?"

"Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise
me from the start--first, last and all over?"

Cheyne smiled. "I've never kept track, but I should estimate, in
dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. The
young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of
'em, and--the old man foots the bill."

Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his
upbringing had cost so much. "And all that's sunk capital, isn't it?"

"Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope."

"Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I've earned is about ten
cents on the hundred. That's a mighty poor catch." Harvey wagged his
head solemnly.

Cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water.

"Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten; and
Dan's at school half the year, too."

"Oh, that's what you're after, is it?"

"No. I'm not after anything. I'm not stuck on myself any just
now--that's all. . . . I ought to be kicked."

"I can't do it, old man; or I would, I presume, if I'd been made that
way."

"Then I'd have remembered it to the last day I lived--and never
forgiven you," said Harvey, his chin on his doubled fists.

"Exactly. That's about what I'd do. You see?"

"I see. The fault's with me and no one else. All the same, something's
got to be done about it."

Cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell to
smoking. Father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid
Cheyne's mouth, and Harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose,
close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. With a touch of
brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a Red Indian of
the story-books.

"Now you can go on from here," said Cheyne, slowly, "costing me between
six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. Well, we'll call you
a man then. You