cesses,
revealing the strategy and system by which they were won, finding her
both understanding and sympathetic. I became a little blade that
delighted to get sharp against his big blade by asking him questions. He
did not want me about the store, and this was one of the things in which
my mother humored him. She knew just when to humor and just when to
threaten the play of the strong card which she always held.

"All the while her ambition was laying its plans. It was that I should
have the Wingfield store one day, myself. Out of school hours I would
range the other department stores. You see, I had not only inherited my
father's face more strikingly than you had, but also his talents. I
spent the summer vacations of my fourteenth and fifteenth years in a
store. I won the attention of my superiors and promise of promotion. I
foresaw the day when I should so prove my ability that father would take
me into his own store, and then, gradually, I would make my place,
secure, while you were idling about Europe. And in those days you were
frail and I was vigorous.

"There was no mistaking that father's sense of convention was the one
thing that stood between him and my desire. He feared the world's opinion
if the truth became known, and deep down in heart he could never get over
the pride of having married into your mother's family. You had very good
blood on the maternal side, as they say, while my mother had begun in the
cloak department and was self-made, like father. Again, I was so truly
his son in every instinct that he may have been a little jealous of me.
Father does not like to think that any other man was ever quite as great
as he is. I confess that is the way I feel, too. That is what life is,
after all--it is yourself. Yes, I saw the store as mine--surely mine,
with time!"

Prather's reins lay across the pommel of the saddle drawn taut by the
drooping head of his horse, which was barely dragging one foot after
another. He gave Jack a glance of flashing resentment and then, in his
first impulse of real emotion, made a fist of one hand and drove it
angrily into the palm of the other before continuing.

"Then father went to Europe to bring you home. He had decided for the
son of convention, the son of blood! Though self-made, he was for family
as against talent. Besides, it was a victory for him. At last you were
his. After your return there was a scene between mother and him, a cool,
bitter argument. He defied