s chin set a trifle more firmly. He pulled out his
cigar-case and proffered it to each of the boys in turn.

"Have a perfecto? No? Guess it's as well for you not to, after all. Wish
Percy was taken that way. Excuse me if I light up. I can talk better."

Soon he was smoking hard.

"I want to have a little talk with you about my boy. Come, now, just
between ourselves, what kind of a fellow is he? You probably know him
better than I do. I've had my business; and he's been under tutors and
away at school so long that I haven't seen much of him since his mother
died, eight years ago."

The boys glanced at one another and hesitated. Young Whittington was a
hard topic to discuss before his father. The millionaire misunderstood
their silence. His face grew gloomy.

"Oh, well, if he's as bad as all that, no matter! I hoped he might have
_some_ good points."

"Don't misunderstand us, Mr. Whittington," said Spurling, quietly.
"Percy isn't a bad fellow. He isn't dishonest. He doesn't cheat or crib.
He's flunked honestly, and that counts for something. He's a good
sprinter, and plays a rattling game of tennis, and he'd be a very fair
baseball-player if he'd only let cigarettes alone. But he's soft and
he's lazy. He's had too much money and taken things too easy. He's
probably never earned a single cent or done a stroke of real work in his
life. He's been in the habit of letting his pocketbook take the place of
his brain and muscles; and he's got the idea that a check, if it's only
large enough, can buy anything on earth. That's why he wouldn't be any
good to himself or anybody else out on Tarpaulin Island. He'd simply be
underfoot. It'd be cruel to take him there. Excuse me if I hurt your
feelings. You've asked a straight question, and I've tried to give you a
straight answer."

The man chewed the butt of his cigar for a few seconds. Then he removed
it from his mouth and blew a smoke-ring.

"I don't believe," he said, reflectively, "that either of you three had
any tougher time than I had when I was a boy. No school after fourteen.
No college. Just work, work, work, and then some more work. But it
hardened me up, made a man of me; perhaps it hardened me too much.
Guess some of the men I've done business with have thought so. After I
made my first million--"

He broke off abruptly.

"But let's get back to Percy. I've done everything in the world for that
boy, and now I'm at the end of my rope. Tutors, private schools, sum