“Be seated—­just a minute,” said the father, turning his face toward his boy but unable to look even in that direction.

The letter was finished, and the stenographer gathered up her notes and withdrew.  Hiram sat nerving himself, his distress accentuating the stern strength of his features.  Presently he said:  “I see you haven’t come dressed for work.”

“Oh, I think these clothes will do for the office,” said Arthur, with apparent carelessness.

“But this business isn’t run from the office,” replied Hiram, with a gentle smile that to the young man looked like the sneer of a tyrant.  “It’s run from the mill.  It prospers—­it always has prospered—­because I work with the men.  I know what they ought to do and what they are doing.  We all work together here.  There ain’t a Sunday clothes job about the place.”

Arthur’s fingers were trembling as he pulled at his small mustache.  What did this tyrant expect of him?  He had assumed that a place was to be made for him in the office, a dignified place.  There he would master the business, would gather such knowledge as might be necessary successfully to direct it, and would bestow that knowledge in the humble, out-of-the-way corner of his mind befitting matters of that kind.  And here was his father, believing that the same coarse and toilsome methods which had been necessary for himself were necessary for a trained and cultured understanding!

“What do you want me to do?” asked Arthur.

Hiram drew a breath of relief.  The boy was going to show good sense and willingness after all.  “I guess you’d better learn barrel-making first,” said he.  He rose.  “I’ll take you to the foreman of the cooperage, and to-morrow you can go to work in the stave department.  The first thing is to learn to make a first-class barrel.”

Arthur slowly rose to follow.  He was weak with helpless rage.  If his father had taken him into the office and had invited him to help in directing the intellectual part of that great enterprise, the part that in a way was not without appeal to the imagination, he felt that he might gradually have accustomed himself to it; but to be put into the mindless routine of the workingman, to be set about menial tasks which a mere muscular machine could perform better than he—­what waste, what degradation, what insult!

He followed his father to the cooperage, the uproar of its machinery jarring fiercely upon him, but not so fiercely as did the common-looking men slaving in torn and patched and stained clothing.  He did not look at the foreman as his father was introducing them and ignored his proffered hand.  “Begin him at the bottom, Patrick,” explained Hiram, “and show him no favors.  We must give him a good education.”