his son and heir to go out, the clerks in the
outer office knew by the young man's face, quite as well as by the
rumbles of thunder which had come through the fast-closed door, that
the "old man" had been giving the young one a piece of his mind.

At first the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his
life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father,
whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his
master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not
but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he
was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of
his ambitions.

"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for you. I
have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.' I set it
before me when your mother promised to marry me that I would make her as
good as the first lady in the land--that is, in New York. She should
have as big a house and as fine a carriage and as handsome frocks as any
one of them--as old Mrs. Wentworth or old Mrs. Brooke of Brookford, who
were the biggest people I ever knew. And I have spent my life for it. I
have grown old before my time. I have gotten so that things have lost
their taste to me; I have done things that I never dreamed I would do to
accomplish it. I have lost the power to sleep working for it, and when
you came I thought I would have my reward in you. I have not only never
stinted you, but I have lavished money on you as if I was the richest
man in New York. I wanted you to have advantages that I never had: as
good as Norman Wentworth or any one else. I have given you things, and
seen you throw them away, that I would have crawled on my knees from my
old home to this office to get when I was a boy. And I thought you were
going to be my pride and my stay and my reward. And you said you were
doing it, and your mother and I had staked our hearts on you. And all
the time you were running away and lying to me and to her, and not doing
one honest lick of work."

The young man interrupted him. "That is not so," he said surlily.

His father pulled out a drawer and took from it a letter. Spreading it
open on his desk, he laid the palm of his open hand on it. "Not so? I
have got the proof of it here." He looked at the young man with level
eyes, eyes in which was such a cold gleam that Ferdy's gaze fell.

"I did not expect you to do it for _me_,