principally
because of the reputation for honesty I had earned. It was a long time
before it began to pay dividends, but nobody grumbled. They knew I was
doing my best--and that I was doing it fair and square, and to-day we
control nearly twenty thousand miles of road."

"Yes, honesty I've learned in your office, sir."

"Well, it's good training,--it's mighty good training, if I do say it
myself. You could have got with a darn bloater like Dick Horseley, and
he'd have worked your ruin. Now you never saw me lose my head, did you,
eh, Ben?"

I replied that I had not--not even when his private wire had ticked off
news of the last panic.

"Well, I never did," he said reflectively, "except with women. Take my
advice, Ben, and find a good sensible wife, even if she's in your own
class, and marry and settle down. It steadies a man, somehow. I'd be a
long ways happier to-day," he added, a little wistfully, "if I'd taken a
wife when I was young."

I thought of Miss Matoaca, with her bright brown eyes, her withered
roseleaf cheeks, and her sacrifice in the cause of honour.

"Whatever you are don't be an old bachelor," he pursued after a pause,
"it may be pleasant in the beginning, but I'll be blamed if it pays in
the end. Find a good sensible woman who hasn't any opinions of her own,
and you will be happy. But as you value your peace, don't go and fall in
love with a woman who has any heathenish ideas in her head. When a woman
once gets that maggot in her brain, she stops believing in gentleness
and self-sacrifice, and by George, she ceases to be a woman. Every man
knows there's got to be a lot of sacrifice in marriage, and he likes to
feel that he's marrying a woman who is fully capable of making it. A
strong-minded woman can't--she's gone and unsexed herself--and instead
of taking pleasure in giving up, she begins to talk everlastingly about
her 'honour.' Pshaw! the next thing she'll expect to be treated as
punctiliously as if she were a business partner!"

The old wound still ached sometimes, it was easy to see; and because of
his age and his growing infirmities, he found it harder to keep back the
querulous complaints that rose to his lips.

"Now, there's that George of mine," he resumed, still fretting, "he's
probably gone and set his eyes on Sally Mickleborough, and it's as plain
as daylight that she's got a plenty of that outlandish spirit of her
aunt's. I don't mean she's got her notions--I ain't saying any harm