“For once I am serious, if you can be made to believe it.  When we met so accidentally in Washington—­well, I was a joke then, I admit; but it’s different now.  You gave me some new ideas to think about, and the more I’ve thought about them the more I’ve seen things your way.  And ever since then I’ve tried hard to do what I thought would please you.  But now I’m sick of the whole thing.  It may be all my fault; but, anyhow, I wish I were well out of it.”

“Why, Allen Sanford!” Her voice showed astonishment and reproach.

“I do,” he insisted.  “I’d give a whole lot right now if I knew that I never had to go back to the office again.”

Alice was genuinely shocked.  “I can’t understand you,” she said, soberly.  “If you had felt this way at the beginning, I shouldn’t have been so much surprised; but now, just when you are getting to a point where you could be useful to father and to yourself, you begin to show the white feather.”

“You mustn’t say that, Alice,” the boy replied, quickly, his tone showing that she hurt him.  “It isn’t quitting; it’s a question of whether or not I am fitted for business—­but you mustn’t say that I am showing the white feather.  I shan’t let even you say that.”

“Father says you are making a splendid start.”  She tried to atone in part for her severity.  “That ought to mean a lot to you, for he is a hard man to satisfy.”

“Did he say that?” Allen replied, temporarily mollified.  “That does mean a whole lot to me; but it’s all your doing, and you must take the responsibility.  Good or bad, I’m your business creation, and you must stand by it.”

“No, Allen; you mustn’t put it that way.  You settled the matter for yourself when you took the stand you did with your father.  Of course I’m more than interested to see you make good, but it isn’t for me to accept either the responsibility or the credit.”

“We never should have had that scrap if it hadn’t been for you.  I shouldn’t have had the nerve.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” she begged.

“It was a good thing all right,” he hastened to reassure her.  “Except for that, I should still be wearing pinafores, and it’s as much better for the pater as it is for me to have shed them.  I’d probably like business all right if I understood the blamed thing; but it isn’t the whole show, you know.”

“Isn’t the business end enough?” she asked, quietly.  “It is for me.  I can’t tell you how much real pleasure I’m getting out of this little scheme father has turned over to me.  It makes all the other things which I had tired of seem more interesting.”

“Business is all right, of course,” he admitted.  “You don’t get much idea of it just going through those letters, but the real thing is the biggest kind of a game you ever saw.  It’s a finesse here and a forcing of the opponent’s hand there, but it can never be the whole game with me.”

“It ought to be.  You have your chance right before you now, and you ought not to need anything else to urge you on.  Just think, you’ve got to make good to justify your own position and to keep daddy from having made a mistake.”