“And it is to go on growing and growing, in my name and your name—­John Wingfield!”

Jack was swallowing spasmodically; he moistened his lips; he grasped the balcony railing so tight that his knuckles were white knobs on the bronze back of his hand.  The father in his enthusiasm hardly noticed this.

“What couldn’t I have done,” he added, “if I had had all this to begin with!  All that you will have to begin with!”

Jack managed a smile, rather thin and wavering.

“Yes, I am going to try my best.”

“All I ask!  You have me for a teacher and I know one or two little things!” said the father, fairly grinning in the transmission of his joke.  “Now, you must be short on clothes,” he added; “so you can get something ready-made downstairs while you have some making at Thompson’s.”

“Don’t you buy your clothes, your best clothes, I mean, in your own store?” Jack asked.  It was his first question in getting acquainted with his future property.

“No.  We cater to a little bigger class of trade—­one of the many twists of the business,” was the answer.  “And now we’ll meet at dinner, shall we, and have a good long talk,” he concluded, closing the interview and turning to the door, his mind snapping back to the matter he was about to take up when he had been interrupted with more eagerness than ever, now that his egoism thrilled with a still greater purpose.

“I—­I left my hat on your desk,” Jack explained, as he followed his father into the office.

“Well, you don’t want to be carrying packages about,” said John Wingfield, Sr.  “That is hardly the fashion in New York, though John Wingfield’s son can make it so if he wants to.  I’ll have that flat-brimmed western one sent up to the house and you can fit out with another when you go downstairs for clothes.  That is, I suppose you will want to keep this as a memento, eh?” and he held out the cowpuncher, sweeping it with a sardonic glance.

“No,” Jack answered decisively, out of the impulse that came with the sight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun on the trail.  It was good to have any kind of an impulse after his giddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of detail that he must master.

If he were to be equal to this future there must be an end of temptation.  He must shake himself free of the last clinging bit of chrysalis of the old life.  His amazed father saw the child of the desert, where convention is made by your fancy and the supply of water in your canteen, go to the window and raise the sash.  Leaning out, he let the hat drop into Broadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watched it fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who picked it up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and with mock strides of grandeur went his way.

“That gave him a lot of pleasure—­and a remarkably quick system for delivering goods, wasn’t it?” said Jack, cheerfully.