d critically, and
judged on their merits. It is a hard hour for a beloved child when he
first sees that look in {24} heretofore indulgent parental eyes. Young
Oliver felt a weight at his heart, but he sat the straighter, and did
not flinch before the appraising glance.

"So you want to marry Peter Lannithorne's daughter, do you? Well, now,
what is there in the idea of marrying a jail-bird's child that you
find especially attractive?"

"Of course I might say that I've seen something of business men in
this town, Ross, say, and Worcester, and Jim Stone, and that, if it
came to a choice between their methods and Lannithorne's, his were the
squarer, for he settled up, and is paying the price besides. But I
don't know that there's any use saying that. I don't want to marry any
of their daughters and you wouldn't want me to. You know what Ruth
Lannithorne is as well as I do. If there's a girl in town that's {25}
finer-grained, or smarter, or prettier, I'd like to have you point her
out! And she has a sense of honor like a man's. I don't know another
girl like her in that. She knows what's fair," said the young man.

Mr. Pickersgill's face relaxed a little. Oliver was making a good
argument with no mushiness about it, and he had a long-settled habit
of appreciating Ollie's arguments.

"She knows what's fair, does she? Then what does she say about
marrying you?"

"She says she won't marry anybody who doesn't respect her father as
she does!"

At this the parent grinned a little, grimly it is true, but
appreciatively. He looked past Oliver's handsome, boyish head, out of
the window, and was silent for a time. When he spoke, it was gravely,
not angrily.

{26}

"Oliver, you're young. The things I'm as sure of as two and two, you
don't yet believe at all. Probably you won't believe 'em if I put them
to you, but it's up to me to do it. Understand, I'm not getting angry
and doing the heavy father over this. I'm just telling you how some
things are in this world,--facts, like gravitation and atmospheric
pressure. Ruth Lannithorne is a good girl, I don't doubt. This world
is chuck full of good girls. It makes some difference which one of 'em
you marry, but not nearly so much difference as you think it does.
What matters, from forty on, for the rest of your life, is the kind of
inheritance you've given your children. You don't know it yet, but the
thing that's laid on men and women to do is to give their children as
good an i