reats."

While she stared, flushed and incredulous, at the hand he had pressed,
George walked swiftly away, tingling with life, back to the house of
death.

VI

At the funeral he submitted to the amazed scrutiny of the country
people. They couldn't hurt him, because they impinged not at all on his
world; but he was relieved when the oblong box had been consigned to the
place reserved for it, and he could, after arranging the last details of
his mother's departure, take the train back to New York.

Blodgett didn't even bother to ask where he had been. He was content
these days to let George go his own way. He hadn't forgotten that the
younger man had seen farther off than he the greatest opportunity for
money making the world had ever offered the greedy. He personally was
more interested in the syndicating of foreign external loans. The
Planters weren't far from the head of that movement, and George rather
resented his stout employer's working hand in hand with the Planters.
George longed to ask him how often he was trying to appear graceful at
Oakmont these days.

The firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue had grown so rapidly that it
took practically all of George's and Lambert's time. Mundy, to whom
George had given a small interest, asked Blodgett if he couldn't leave
to devote himself entirely to the offices upstairs.

"Go to it," Blodgett agreed, good naturedly. "Draw your profits and your
salary from Morton after this."

George mulled over the sacrifice. Did it mean that Blodgett was so close
to the Planters that a merger was possible?

"There's no use," he told Blodgett. "I'm earning practically nothing in
your office, because I'm never here. I want to resign."

"Run along, sonny," Blodgett said. "Your salary is a small portion of
the profits your infant firm is bringing me. I like you around the
office once a day. Old Planter hasn't fired his boy, has he, and he's
upstairs all the time, and he's taken over some of the old man's best
clerks."

"He's Mr. Planter's son," George reminded him.

"And ain't you like a good son to me," the other leered, "making money
for papa Blodgett?"

"Why did you let Mundy go so peacefully?" George asked, suspiciously.

"Because," Blodgett said, "he's been here a good many years, and he can
make more money this way. Didn't want to stand in his light, and I had
somebody in view."

But George wouldn't credit Blodgett with such altruism. Why was the man
so infernally