“So does any education.  Even at its worst this can’t cost much money.  He can’t wreck things—­the organization is too good—­he’ll just make ’em wobble a little.  And this is a mighty small and incidental proposition, while this California lay-out is a big project.  No, by my figuring Bob won’t actually do much, but he’ll lie awake nights to do a hell of a lot of deciding, and——.”

“Oh, I know,” broke in Orde with a laugh; “you haven’t changed an inch in twenty years—­and ‘it’s not doing but deciding that makes a man,’” he quoted.

“Well, isn’t it?” demanded Welton insistently.

“Of course,” agreed Orde with another laugh.  “I was just tickled to see you hadn’t changed a hair.  Now if you’d only moralize on square pegs in round holes, I’d hear again the birds singing in the elms by the dear old churchyard.”

Welton grinned, a trifle shamefacedly.  Nevertheless he went on with the development of his philosophy.

“Well,” he asserted stoutly, “that’s just what Bob was when I got there.  He can’t handle figures any better than I can, and Collins had been putting him through a course of sprouts.”  He paused and sipped at his glass.  “Of course, if I wasn’t absolutely certain of the men under him, it would be a fool proposition.  Bob isn’t the kind to get onto treachery or double-dealing very quick.  He likes people too well.  But as it is, he’ll get a lot of training cheap.”

Orde ruminated over this for some time, sipping slowly between puffs at his cigar.

“Why wouldn’t it be better to take him out to California now?” he asked at length.  “You’ll be building your roads and flumes and railroad, getting your mill up, buying your machinery and all the rest of it.  That ought to be good experience for him—­to see the thing right from the beginning.”

“Bob is going to be a lumberman, and that isn’t lumbering; it’s construction.  Once it’s up, it will never have to be done again.  The California timber will last out Bob’s lifetime, and you know it.  He’d better learn lumbering, which he’ll do for the next fifty years, than to build a mill, which he’ll never have to do again—­unless it burns up,” he added as a half-humorous afterthought.

“Correct,” Orde agreed promptly to this.  “You’re a wonder.  When I found a university with my ill-gotten gains, I’ll give you a job as professor of—­well, of Common Sense, by jiminy!”

XX

Bob managed to lose some money in his two years of apprenticeship.  That is to say, the net income from the small operations under his charge was somewhat less than it would have been under Welton’s supervision.  Even at that, the balance sheet showed a profit.  This was probably due more to the perfection of the organization than to any great ability on Bob’s part.  Nevertheless, he exercised a real control over the firm’s destinies, and in one or two instances of sudden crisis threw its energies definitely into channels of his own choosing.  Especially was this true in dealing with the riverman’s arch-enemy, the mossback.