friend of
mine, I've had many a fellow right out of the street that had to work
hard all his life, and didn't begin to take hold like this son of
yours."

Lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction. As he probably
conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, in a perfectly casual way,
the supreme excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and
benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face with Bromfield Corey,
praising his son to him, and receiving his grateful acknowledgments as
if he were the father of some office-boy whom Lapham had given a place
half but of charity.

"Yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold here, I didn't have much
faith in his ideas, that's the truth. But I had faith in him, and I
saw that he meant business from the start. I could see it was born in
him. Any one could."

"I'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me," said Bromfield
Corey; "but it's in the blood, on both sides." "Well, sir, we can't
help those things," said Lapham compassionately. "Some of us have got
it, and some of us haven't. The idea is to make the most of what we
HAVE got."

"Oh yes; that is the idea. By all means."

"And you can't ever tell what's in you till you try. Why, when I
started this thing, I didn't more than half understand my own strength.
I wouldn't have said, looking back, that I could have stood the wear
and tear of what I've been through. But I developed as I went along.
It's just like exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. You can lift
twice or three times as much after you've been in training a month as
you could before. And I can see that it's going to be just so with
your son. His going through college won't hurt him,--he'll soon slough
all that off,--and his bringing up won't; don't be anxious about it. I
noticed in the army that some of the fellows that had the most go-ahead
were fellows that hadn't ever had much more to do than girls before the
war broke out. Your son will get along."

"Thank you," said Bromfield Corey, and smiled--whether because his
spirit was safe in the humility he sometimes boasted, or because it was
triply armed in pride against anything the Colonel's kindness could do.

"He'll get along. He's a good business man, and he's a fine fellow.
MUST you go?" asked Lapham, as Bromfield Corey now rose more
resolutely. "Well, glad to see you. It was natural you should want to
come and see what he was about, and I'm glad you did. I should have
fe