“That’s right, Mr. Ranger,” said Patrick, eying his new pupil dubiously.  He was not skilled in analysis of manner and character, so Arthur’s superciliousness missed him entirely and he was attributing the cold and vacant stare to stupidity.  “A regular damn dude,” he was saying to himself.  “As soon as the old man’s gone, some fellow with brains’ll do him out of the business.  If the old man’s wise, he’ll buy him an annuity, something safe and sure.  Why do so many rich people have sons like that?  If I had one of his breed I’d shake his brains up with a stave.”

Arthur mechanically followed his father back to the office.  At the door Hiram, eager to be rid of him, said:  “I reckon that’s about all we can do to-day.  You’d better go to Black and Peters’s and get you some clothes.  Then you can show up at the cooperage at seven to-morrow morning, ready to put in a good day’s work.”

He laid his hand on his son’s shoulder, and that gesture and the accompanying look, such as a surgeon might give his own child upon whom he was performing a cruelly painful operation, must have caused some part of what he felt to penetrate to the young man; for, instead of bursting out at his father, he said appealingly:  “Would it be a very great disappointment to you if I were to go into—­into some—­some other line?”

“What line?” asked Hiram.

“I haven’t settled—­definitely.  But I’m sure I’m not fitted for this.”  He checked himself from going on to explain that he thought it would mean a waste of all the refinements and elegancies he had been at so much pains to acquire.

“Who’s to look after the business when I’m gone?” asked Hiram.  “Most of what we’ve got is invested here.  Who’s to look after your mother’s and sister’s interests, not to speak of your own?”

“I’d be willing to devote enough time to it to learn the management,” said Arthur, “but I don’t care to know all the details.”

It was proof of Hiram’s great love for the boy that he had no impulse of anger at this display of what seemed to him the most priggish ignorance.  “There’s only one way to learn,” said he quietly.  “That’s the way I’ve marked out for you.  Don’t forget—­we start up at seven.  You can breakfast with me at a quarter past six, and we’ll come down together.”

As Arthur walked homeward he pictured himself in jumper and overalls on his way from work of an evening—­meeting the Whitneys—­meeting Janet Whitney!  Like all Americans, who become inoculated with “grand ideas,” he had the super-sensitiveness to appearances that makes foreigners call us the most snobbishly conventional people on earth.  What would it avail to be in character the refined person in the community and in position the admired person, if he spent his days at menial toil and wore the livery of labor?  He knew Janet Whitney would blush as she bowed to him, and that she wouldn’t bow to him unless she were compelled to do so because she had not seen him in time to escape; and he felt that she would be justified.  The whole business seemed to him a hideous dream, a sardonic practical joke upon him.  Surely, surely, he would presently wake from this nightmare to find himself once more an unimperiled gentleman.