rail she was and how
constrained.

Jack was fourteen when his mother died. He was brought home and sent to
school in America; and two-years later Dr. Bennington announced that the
slender youngster, who had been so completely estranged from the affairs
of the store, must matriculate in the ozone of high altitudes instead of
in college, if his life were to be saved. Whether Jack were riding over
the _mesas_ of Arizona or playing in a villa garden in Florence, John
Wingfield, Sr.'s outlook on life was the same. It was the obsession of
self in his affairs. After the eclipse of his egoism the deluge. The very
thought that anyone should succeed him was a shock reminding him of
growing age in the midst of the full possession of his faculties, while
he felt no diminution of his ambition.

"I am getting better," came the occasional message from that stranger
son. And the father kept on playing the tune of accruing millions on the
push-buttons. His decision to send Dr. Bennington to Arizona came
suddenly, just after he had turned sixty-three. He had had an attack of
grip at the same time that his attention had been acutely called to the
demoralization of another great business institution whose head had died
without issue, leaving his affairs in the hands of trustees.

Two days of confinement in his room with a high pulse had brought
reflection and the development of atavism. What if the institution built
as a monument to himself should also pass! What if the name of Wingfield,
his name, should no longer float twelve stories high over his building!
He foresaw the promise of companionship of a restless and ghastly
apparition in the future.

But he recovered rapidly from his illness and his mental processes were
as keen and prehensile as ever. Checking off one against the other, with
customary shrewdness, he had a number of doctors go over him, and all
agreed that he was good for twenty years yet. Twenty years! Why, Jack
would be middle-aged by that time! Twenty years was the difference
between forty-three and sixty-three. Since he was forty-three he had
quintupled his fortune. He would at least double it again. He was not
old; he was young; he was an exceptional man who had taken good care of
himself. The threescore and ten heresy could not apply to him.

Bennington's telegram irritated him with its lack of precision. Fifteen
hundred dollars and expenses to send an expert to Arizona and in
return this unbusinesslike report: