Thatcher had referred to this incident with unmistakable pride; he was evidently amused rather than chagrined by his son’s scorn of the gift of a profitable industry.  “I offered him money to start a carpenter shop or furniture factory or anything he wanted to tackle, but he wouldn’t have it.  Said he wanted to work in somebody else’s shop to get the discipline.  Discipline?  That boy never had any discipline in his life!  I’ve kept my nose to the grindstone ever since I was knee-high to a toad just so that boy wouldn’t have to worry about his daily bread, and now, damn it all, he runs a carpenter shop on the top floor of a house that stands me, lot, furniture, and all, nearly a hundred thousand dollars!  I can’t talk to everybody about this; my wife and daughters don’t want any discipline; don’t like the United States or anything in it except exchange on London; and here I am with a boy who wears overalls and tries to callous his hands to look like a laboring man.  If you can figure that out, it’s a damn sight more than I can do!  It’s one on Ed Thatcher, that’s all!”

“If I try to answer you, please don’t think I pretend to any unusual knowledge of human nature; but what I see in the boy is a kind of poetic attitude toward America—­our politics, the whole scheme; and it’s a poetic strain in him that accounts for this feeling about labor.  And he has a feeling for justice and mercy; he’s strong for the underdog.”  “I suppose,” said Thatcher dryly, “that if he’d been an underdog the way I was he’d be more tickled at a chance to sit on top.  When I wore overalls it wasn’t funny.  Well, what am I going to do with him?”

“If you really want me to tell you I’d say to let him alone.  He’s a perfectly clean, straight, high-minded boy.  If he were physically strong enough I should recommend him to go to college, late as it is for him, or better, to a school where he would really satisfy what seems to be his sincere ambition to learn to do something with his hands.  But he’s all right as he is.  You ought to be glad that his aims are so wholesome.  There are sons of prosperous men right around here who see everything red.”

“That boy,” declared Thatcher, pride and love surging in him, “is as clean as wheat!”

“Quite so; no one could know him without loving him.  And I don’t mind saying that I find myself in accord with many of his ideas.”

“Sort of damned idealist yourself?”

“I should blush to say it,” laughed Dan; “but I feel my heart warming when Allen gets to soaring sometimes; he expresses himself with great vividness.  He goes after me hard on my laissez-faire notions.”

“I take the count and throw up the sponge!”

“Oh, that’s a chestnut that means merely that the underdog had better stay under if he can’t fight his way out.”

“It seems tough when you boil it down to that; I guess maybe Allen’s right—­we all ought to divide up.  I’m willing, only”—­and he grinned quizzically—­“I’m paired with Mort Bassett.”