“What d’you mean by it?”

“Mean by what, dad?” asked the boy with that calmness that always irritated I. Tapp.

“Settin’ your ma and the girls on me?  They all lit on me at once.  All crying together some foolishness about your marrying this Grayling girl and putting the family into society.”

“Into society?” murmured Lawford.  “I—­I don’t get you.”

“You know what they’re after,” cried the candy manufacturer.  “If a dynamite bomb would blow in the walls of that exclusive Back Bay set, they’d use one.  And now it turns out this girl’s right in the swim------I thought you said she was a picture actress?”

“I thought she was,” stammered Lawford.

“Bah!  You thought?  You never thought a thing in your life of any consequence.”

The young man was silent at this thrust.  His silence made I. Tapp even angrier.

“But it makes no difference—­no difference at all, I tell you.  If she was the queen of Sheba I’d say the same,” went on the candy manufacturer wildly.  “I’ve said you shall marry Dorothy Johnson—­I’ve always meant you should; and marry her you shall!”

“No, dad, I’m not going to do any such thing.”

Suddenly the Taffy King quieted down.  He struggled to control his voice and his shaking hands.  A deadly calm mantled his excitement and his eyes glittered as he gazed up at his tall son.

“Is this a straight answer, Lawford?  Or are you just talking to hear yourself talk?” he asked coldly.

“I am determined not to marry Dot.”

“And you’ll marry that other girl?”

“If she’ll have me.  But whether or no I won’t be forced into marriage with a girl I do not love.”

“Love!” exploded the Taffy King.  Then in a moment he was calm again, only for that inward glow of rage.  “People don’t really love each other until after marriage.  Love is born of propinquity and thrives on usage and custom.  You only think you love this girl.  It’s after two people have been through a good deal together that they learn what love means.”

Lawford was somewhat startled by this philosophy; but he was by no means convinced.

“Whether or no,” he repeated, “I think I should have the same right that you had of choosing a wife.”

His father brushed this aside without comment.  “Do you understand what this means—­if you are determined to disobey me?” he snarled.

“I suppose you won’t begrudge me a bite and sup till I find a job, dad?” the son said with just a little tremor in his voice.  “I know I haven’t really anything of my own.  You have done everything for me.  Your money bought the very clothes I stand in.  You gave me the means to buy the Merry Andrew.  I realize that nothing I have called my own actually belongs to me because I did not earn it——­”

“As long as you are amenable to discipline,” put in his father gloomily, “you need not feel this way.”