ting; it's a question of
whether or not I am fitted for business--but you mustn't say that I am
showing the white feather. I shan't let even you say that."

"Father says you are making a splendid start." She tried to atone in
part for her severity. "That ought to mean a lot to you, for he is a
hard man to satisfy."

"Did he say that?" Allen replied, temporarily mollified. "That does mean
a whole lot to me; but it's all your doing, and you must take the
responsibility. Good or bad, I'm your business creation, and you must
stand by it."

"No, Allen; you mustn't put it that way. You settled the matter for
yourself when you took the stand you did with your father. Of course I'm
more than interested to see you make good, but it isn't for me to accept
either the responsibility or the credit."

"We never should have had that scrap if it hadn't been for you. I
shouldn't have had the nerve."

"Oh, don't say that," she begged.

"It was a good thing all right," he hastened to reassure her. "Except
for that, I should still be wearing pinafores, and it's as much better
for the pater as it is for me to have shed them. I'd probably like
business all right if I understood the blamed thing; but it isn't the
whole show, you know."

"Isn't the business end enough?" she asked, quietly. "It is for me. I
can't tell you how much real pleasure I'm getting out of this little
scheme father has turned over to me. It makes all the other things
which I had tired of seem more interesting."

"Business is all right, of course," he admitted. "You don't get much
idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the
biggest kind of a game you ever saw. It's a finesse here and a forcing
of the opponent's hand there, but it can never be the whole game with
me."

"It ought to be. You have your chance right before you now, and you
ought not to need anything else to urge you on. Just think, you've got
to make good to justify your own position and to keep daddy from having
made a mistake."

The boy rose from the arm of the great chair on which he had been
resting and advanced to the little desk behind which Alice sat. With his
hands on the end, he leaned forward until his face was near hers,
looking straight into her eyes.

"Perhaps I don't need anything else," he said in a low, firm tone, "but
it wouldn't be honest not to tell you that the same something which I
had in mind before I started in business has been there ever since