's advice, oft
reiterated to his employees, and at twenty-one had married the first
woman whom he could persuade to share his fortunes. She happened to be an
angular school-mistress, much older than he, who also wore thick glasses,
and who had now borne him four children, all near-sighted, like herself.

The young man was relating how his chief, now cruising in the
Mediterranean, kept in touch with all the details of the business,
arranging his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home,
and "knocking off work enough to keep two stenographers busy." His father
told, in turn, the plan his corporation was considering, of putting in an
electric railway plant at Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth; he had an awful
apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there. Yet he
rather liked to hear these legends of the iron kings, that were told and
retold on Sundays and holidays; these stories of palaces in Venice,
yachts on the Mediterranean, and high play at Monte Carlo appealed to his
fancy, and he was interested in the triumphs of cash boys who had become
famous, though he had no mind for the cash-boy stage.

After supper was over, and he had helped to dry the dishes, Paul
nervously asked his father whether he could go to George's to get some
help in his geometry, and still more nervously asked for car-fare. This
latter request he had to repeat, as his father, on principle, did not
like to hear requests for money, whether much or little. He asked Paul
whether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer, and told him that
he ought not to leave his school work until Sunday; but he gave him the
dime. He was not a poor man, but he had a worthy ambition to come up in
the world. His only reason for allowing Paul to usher was that he thought
a boy ought to be earning a little.

Paul bounded upstairs, scrubbed the greasy odour of the dish-water from
his hands with the ill-smelling soap he hated, and then shook over
his fingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in
his drawer. He left the house with his geometry conspicuously under his
arm, and the moment he got out of Cordelia Street and boarded a downtown
car, he shook off the lethargy of two deadening days, and began to live
again.

The leading juvenile of the permanent stock company which played at one
of the downtown theatres was an acquaintance of Paul's, and the
boy had been invited to drop in at the Sunday-night rehearsals whenev