f he quarrelled with him, he might lose everything.
Edwin was one of a few odd-minded persons who did not regard this
arrangement as perfectly just, proper, and in accordance with sound
precedent. But he was helpless. His father would tell him, and did
tell him, that he had fought no struggles, suffered no hardship, had no
responsibility, and that he was simply coddled from head to foot in
cotton-wool.

"I say you must go your own road," said his father.

"But at this rate I should never be able to marry!"

"Do you reckon," asked Darius, with mild cold scorn, "as you getting
married will make your services worth one penny more to my business?"
And he waited an answer with the august calm of one who is aware that he
is unanswerable. But he might with equal propriety have tied his son's
hands behind him and then diverted himself by punching his head.

"I do all I can," said Edwin meekly.

"And what about getting orders?" Darius questioned grimly. "Didn't I
offer you two and a half per cent on all new customers you got yourself?
And how many have you got? Not one. I give you a chance to make extra
money and you don't take it. Ye'd sooner go running about after girls."

This was a particular grievance of the father against the son: that the
son brought no grist to the mill in the shape of new orders.

"But how can I get orders?" Edwin protested.

"How did I get 'em? How do I get 'em? Somebody has to get 'em." The
old man's lips were pressed together, and he waved "The Christian News"
slightly in his left hand.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOUR.

In a few minutes both their voices had risen. Darius, savage, stooped
to replace with the shovel a large burning coal that had dropped on the
tiles and was sending up a column of brown smoke.

"I tell you what I shall do," he said, controlling himself bitterly.
"It's against my judgement, but I shall put you up to a pound a week at
the New Year, if all goes well, of course. And it's good money, let me
add."

He was entirely serious, and almost sincere. He loathed paying money
over to his son. He was convinced that in an ideal world sons would
toil gratis for their fathers who lodged and fed them and gifted them
with the reversion of excellent businesses.

"But what good's a pound a week?" Edwin demanded, with the
querulousness of one who is losing hope.

"What good's a pound a week!" Darius repeated, h