“Why not?”

“I’m too optimistic, I think, to make a good diplomat.  If a man’s a gentleman, and treats me square, I’m apt to think he’s all right—­and, from what I hear, in diplomacy the one who fools the others the most times is the best fellow.  Isn’t that right?”

“Some people would tell you that the same thing holds true in business.”

“I know; but in business there seems to be something more tangible to work on.  Of course I don’t know anything about it, but I think I could make a better show selling bonds or cotton than ententes cordiales.”

“Have you made any effort to secure a position?”

“Not yet, Mr. Gorham.  The pater would be more than peeved if I didn’t wait for him and his diplomatic expectations.  But if he doesn’t get busy pretty soon, I think I’ll hike it over to New York, and see what’s doing.”

Gorham smiled in spite of the boy’s earnestness.  “Surely your father would realize how much in earnest you are if you talked to him as you’re talking to me now.”

“Father always looks upon me as a joke,” Allen continued.  “He made his own way, you see, and then, because he was rich, he didn’t want me to endure the hardships which really made him what he is.  He gave me plenty of money all the way through Harvard, and ever since, in fact; yet he is always wondering why I lack ‘initiative.’  He’s been mighty generous, and I appreciate it all, but don’t you think it’s one thing to build your own character and economize because you have to, and another to economize when you know you don’t have to?  I guess that’s my complaint.”

“He was very proud of what you did at college,” Gorham said.  “I never used to meet him without hearing about some of your athletic triumphs.”

“I suspect it is you who call them triumphs,” Allen replied; “that doesn’t sound like the pater to me.  Of course, some of the things I did in college seemed worth while at the time; I tried for the football team, and I made it—­by hard work, with a hundred other fellows doing their best to push me back on the side lines; I tried for the crew, and I made it; I rowed two years at New London, and there was some work about that.  I’m afraid I made athletics my vocation and studies my avocation, but I tried to do what I undertook as well as I knew how, and some of the boys still think I’m pretty good in certain lines.”

“Life is scarcely a football-field, my boy,” Gorham remarked, sententiously.  “The world of business admits of no vacuum.  It is the survival of the fittest, and work is the great secret of success.”

“I know what a ‘vacuum’ is, anyway,” Patricia was recovering from her temporary chagrin.

“Now is your chance to square yourself,” said her father, turning to her, kindly.

“I learned that at school last winter,” the child continued, proudly:  “a ‘vacuum’ is the place where the Pope lives when it is vacant.”