"PAUL DOUGLAS."

Esther felt relieved to know Paul had sent Walter some money. She had
feared the boy was working too hard.

"Not a bit," said Paul, stoutly. "The boys that work their way through
are not hurt by it. Walter is perfectly well and strong. He is able to
stand it."

"His tastes are very refined," murmured Esther. "I can understand how he
feels about waiting on the table."

"Waiting on the table is a great business," said Paul. "What would
happen to the old world if everybody now waiting on tables should refuse
to do it any more? It would disarrange our civilisation more than a
universal war. There is nothing finer or more needed than waiting on
tables."

But there was one phrase in Walter's letter that Paul dwelt over after
he had gone back to the office. Walter had written of the luxury in the
rooms of the rich fellows, evidently with some spirit of envy, and
closed his brief comment by saying:

"You can see for yourself I am not in the same class with these fellows,
but it must be fine to have money and not have to scheme how to get on."

Paul had a perfect horror of money-loving, of soft and toadying habits,
of the worship of style and society, and nonsense of high life
generally. Nothing cut him deeper at heart than the feeling, as Walter
grew up, that the boy had a streak in his character somewhere of the
very thing that his father detested. It was this knowledge of a weakness
in Walter that led to Paul's great desire to give the boy another
Standard, to impress on him the nobility of labor and the disgrace of
getting something for nothing. The one thing so far that was saving
Walter from becoming a victim to his luxurious tastes was his real love
of scientific knowledge and his desire to make of himself a first-class
engineer. Paul counted on this factor to keep Walter steady to the main
thing, but he realised as he read the boy's letter that there were
influences in the Burrton school powerfully pulling him in other
directions, away from the simple and plain habits he had always known at
home.

Walter's next letter acknowledged with much evident gratitude the
receiving of the money his father had sent and spoke again of the
scholarship opening. That matter, however, would not be settled until a
trying out of several applicants for the honour.

Two months later Paul received a short letter from Walter, written
evidently in some bitterness, saying the scholarship had been finally
given t