t it sadly
irritated the Elder. He did not like unusual or unprecedented things,
and Peter Junior was certainly not like himself, and was acting in an
unprecedented manner.

"You have now regained a fair amount of strength and have reached an
age when you should think seriously of what you are to do in life. As
you know, it has always been my intention that you should take a place
here and fit yourself for the responsibilities that are now mine, but
which will some day devolve on you."

Peter Junior raised his hand in protest, then dropped it. "I mean to
be an artist, father."

"Faugh! An artist? Look at your friend, Bertrand Ballard. What has he
to live on? What will he have laid by for his old age? How has he
managed to live all these years--he and his wife? Miserable
hand-to-mouth existence! I'll see my son trying to emulate him! You'll
be an artist? And how will you support a wife if you ever have one?
You mean to marry some day?"

"I mean to marry Betty Ballard," said Peter Junior, with a rugged set
of his jaw.

Again the Elder made that despairing downward thrust with his open
hands. "Take a wife who has nothing, and a career which brings in
nothing, and live on what your father has amassed for you, and leave
your sons nothing--a pretty way for you to carry on the work I have
begun for you--to--establish an honorable family--"

"Father, father, I mean to do all I can to please you. I'll be always
dutiful--and honorable--but you must leave me my manhood. You must
allow me to choose my own path in life."

The Elder paced the floor a few moments longer, then resumed his chair
opposite his son, and, leaning back, looked across the table at his
boy, meditatively, with half-closed eyes. At last he said, "We'll take
this matter to the Lord, and leave it in his hands."

Then Peter Junior cried out upon him: "No, no, father; spare me that.
It only means that you'll state to the Lord what is your own way, and
pray to have it, and then be more than ever convinced that it is the
Lord's way."

"My son, my son!"

"It's so, father. I'm willing to ask for guidance of the Lord, but I'm
not willing to have you dictate to the Lord what--what I must do, and
so whip me in line with the scourge of prayer." Peter Junior paused,
as he looked in his father's face and saw the shocked and sorrowful
expression there instead of the passionate retort he expected. "I am
wrong to talk so, father; forgive me; but--have patience a li