Mr. Ross flung down his napkin, facing him.  “You’re going where I put you, young man.  You’re going to get the right kind of a start that I didn’t get in the biggest money-making business in the world.”

“I won’t.  I’ll get me a job in an aeroplane-factory.”

His father’s palm came down with a small crash, shivering the china.  “By Gad! you take that impudence out of your voice to me or I’ll rawhide it out!”

“Harry!”

“Leave the table!”

“Harry, he’s only a child—­”

“Go to your room!”

His heavy, unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried so furiously to resist, Edwin charged with lowered head from the room, sobs escaping in raw gutturals.

Mr. Ross came back to his plate, breathing heavily, fist, with a knife upright in it, coming down again on the table, his mouth open, to facilitate labored breathing.

“By Heaven!  I’ll cowhide that boy to his senses!  I’ve never laid hand on him yet, but he ain’t too old.  I’ll get him down to common sense, if I got to break a rod over him.”

Handkerchief against trembling lips, Mrs. Ross looked after the vanished form, eyes brimming.

“Harry, you—­you’re so rough with him.”

“I’ll be rougher yet before I’m through.”

“He’s only a—­”

“He’s rewarding the way you scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs and societies by asking you to do it another four years.  You’re getting your thanks now.  College!  Well, not if the court knows it—­”

“He’s got talent, Harry; his teacher says he—­”

“So’d your father have talent.”

“If pa hadn’t lost his eye in the Civil War—­”

“I’m going to put my son’s talent where I can see a future for it.”

“He’s ambitious, Harry.”

“So’m I—­to see my son trained to be something besides a looney inventor like his grandfather before him.”

“It’s all I want in life, Harry, to see my two boys of you happy.”

“It’s your woman-ideas I got to blame for this.  I want you to stop, Millie, putting rich man’s ideas in his head.  You hear?  I won’t stand for it.”

“Harry, if—­if it’s the money, maybe I could manage—­”

“Yes—­and scrimp and save and scrooge along without a laundress another four years, and do his washing and—­”

“I—­could fix the money part, Harry—­easy.”

He regarded her with his jaw dropped in the act of chewing.

“By Gad! where do you plant it?”

“It—­it’s the way I scrimp, Harry.  Another woman would spend it on clothes or—­a servant—­or matinees.  It ain’t hard for a home body like me to save, Harry.”

He reached across the table for her wrist.

“Poor little soul,” he said, “you don’t see day-light.”

“Let him go, Harry, if—­if he wants it.  I can manage the money.”

His scowl returned, darkening him.