experience. In other words, according to Mr. Tooting, who
took an intense interest in the matter, "not wearing the collar" had
been more of a financial success for Austen than that gentleman had
imagined. There proved to be many clients to whom the fact that young
Mr. Vane did not carry a "retainer pass" actually appealed. These
clients paid their bills, but they were neither large nor influential,
as a rule, with the notable exception of the Gaylord Lumber Company,
where the matters for trial were not large. If young Tom Gaylord had had
his way, Austen would have been the chief counsel for the corporation.

To tell the truth, Austen Vane had a secret aversion to going to the
capital during a session, a feeling that such a visit would cause him
unhappiness. In spite of his efforts, and indeed in spite of Hilary's,
Austen and his father had grown steadily apart. They met in the office
hallway, in the house in Hanover Street when Hilary came home to sleep,
and the elder Mr. Vane was not a man to thrive on small talk. His world
was the battlefield from which he directed the forces of the great
corporation which he served, and the cherished vision of a son in whom
he could confide his plans, upon whose aid and counsel he could lean,
was gone forever. Hilary Vane had troublesome half-hours, but on the
whole he had reached the conclusion that this son, like Sarah Austen,
was one of those inexplicable products in which an extravagant and
inscrutable nature sometimes indulged. On the rare evenings when the two
were at home together, the Honourable Hilary sat under one side of the
lamp with a pile of documents and newspapers, and Austen under the other
with a book from the circulating library. No public questions could be
broached upon which they were not as far apart as the poles, and the
Honourable Hilary put literature in the same category as embroidery.
Euphrasia, when she paused in her bodily activity to darn their
stockings, used to glance at them covertly from time to time, and many a
silent tear of which they knew nothing fell on her needle.

On the subject of his protracted weekly absences at the State capital,
the Honourable Hilary was as uncommunicative as he would have been had
he retired for those periods to a bar-room. He often grunted and cleared
his throat and glanced at his son when their talk bordered upon these
absences; and he was even conscious of an extreme irritation against
himself as well as Austen beca