hoped not, but felt that silence was safer than
putting his hopes into words.

"This comes of turning socialist! You insult your father who supports
you in luxury---"

"I don't mean to insult you, Father, and I don't want to be supported
in luxury. I want to work for every cent I have. I want to work hard."

"I never thought," Peter senior reflected aloud, abruptly changing his
tone, "to hear a son of mine spout this sort of cheap folderol, and I
never thought that any one of my blood would be weak enough to come
crawling and begging to break a solemn promise."

"It means strength, not weakness, to break some promises--the kind
that never ought to have been made," Peter junior defended himself.
"I'd break it without crawling or begging if I thought you'd prefer,
except that it would be no use. Unless I had your permission, I
couldn't get taken into the Hands."

"Well, you don't get it. See?" retorted the head of the Hands as
rudely as he could ever have spoken in old days to his humblest
subordinate.

"Then, Father, if that's your last word on the subject," said Petro,
rising, "this means for you and me, where business is concerned, the
parting of the ways."

The old man's sallow face was slowly, darkly suffused with red.
"You're trying to bully me," he grunted. "But I'm not taking any
bluff."

"You misjudge me." Petro still kept his temper. "I'd be a disgusting
cad to try on such a game with you, and I don't think I am that. I'm
more thankful than I can tell you for all you've done for me. You've
had a hard life yourself, and you've secured me an easy one. You never
had time to see the world, but you let me see it because I longed
to--when I saw you had no use for me in the business. You let me give
money away and, thanks to your generosity, one or two schemes I had at
heart are in working order already. There's enough saved out of my
allowance for the last few years to see them through, if I never take
another cent from you. And I never will, from this day on, Father,
while you run the Hands on present lines."

"You're a blank idiot!" snarled the old man; but a strained, almost
frightened look was stretched in queer lines on his yellow face. He
was thinking of Ena and of the newspapers. He could hear the dogs
yapping round his feet.

"Young Peter Rolls breaks away from home. Earns his living with his
own hands, not father's Hands. What he says about his principles"--or
some such rot as that would certain