here were more where they came from in a city
of five millions population; and no one in the world knew so well as he
how to train them.

"Very good, Peter!" he said rigidly, as if he were making a declaration
of war. "Fix up your papers and leave as soon as you please. I will have
one of the clerks take your place."

"Thank you. That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!" Mortimer returned, so
politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable.

John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and
important letters that had been left on his desk for further
consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting.

"This one is a little complicated," he thought, "I will lay it aside."

He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results. A
tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and
the paper. Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the
exclusion of everything else. Unquestionably, this son had a lot of
magnetic force in him; he had command of men. Why, he had won fifty of
the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the
desert, when they had no idea what they were in for!

His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk.
Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom
that Jack had established. The father had become so used to their
presence that he was unconscious of it. For all the pleasure he got out
of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the
limousine. His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he
would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother
that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence. The velvety
richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of
their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger.
A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him. It was like a
breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr.
Bennington.

"Well, he has gone!" he told the doctor, desperately.

"You did not tell him the truth!" came the answer; and he noted that the
doctor's voice was without its usual suavity. It was as matter-of-fact to
the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a
dispensary case.

"No, not exactly," John Wingfield, Sr. confessed.

"I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the tempe