The thing he should like to do would be to travel on some interesting commission for his grandfather.  On what commission, for instance?  The purchasing of rare works of art for the picture-gallery of the great store?  No mean exhibition it was they had there.  But he had not the training for such a commission; he would be cheated out of hand when it came to buying!  They sent skilled buyers on such quests.

He thought of rushing off to the far West and buying a ranch.  That was a fit and proper thing for a fellow like himself; plenty of rich men’s sons had done it.  If she could see him in cowboy garb, rough-clad, sunburnt, muscular, she would respect him then perhaps.  There would be no more flinging at him that he was a cotillion leader!  How he hated the term!

The day was fair and cold, the roads rather better than he had expected, and by luncheon-time he had reached a large town, seventy miles away from his own city, where he knew of an exceptionally good place to obtain a refreshing meal.  With this end in view, he was making more than ordinary village speed when disaster befell him in the shape of a break in his electric connections.  Two blocks away from the hotel he sought, the car suddenly went dead.

While he was investigating, fingers blue with cold, a voice he knew hailed him.  It came from a young man who advanced from the doorway of a store, in front of which the car had chanced to stop.  “Something wrong, Rich?”

Richard stood up.  He gripped his friend’s hand cordially, glancing up at the sign above the store as he did so.

“Mighty glad to see you, Benson,” he responded.  “I didn’t realize I’d stopped in front of your father’s place of business.”

Hugh Benson was a college classmate.  In spite of the difference between their respective estates in the college world, the two had been rather good friends during the four years of their being thrown together.  Since graduation, however, they had seldom met, and for the last two years Richard Kendrick had known no more of his former friend than that the good-sized dry-goods store, standing on a prominent corner in the large town through which he often motored without stopping, still bore the name of Hugh Benson’s father.

When the car was running again Benson climbed in and showed Richard the way to his own home, where he prevailed on his friend to remain for lunch with himself and his mother.  Richard learned for the first time that Benson’s father had died within the last year.

“And you’re going on with the business?” questioned Richard, as the two lingered alone together in Benson’s hall before parting.  The talk during the meal had been mostly of old college days, of former classmates, and of the recent history of nearly every mutual acquaintance except that of the speakers themselves.

“There was nothing else for me to do when father left us,” Benson responded in a low tone.  “I’m not as well adapted to it as he was, but I expect to learn.”