The young man’s hand went out, fell with a swift movement, to touch his father’s, and was as swiftly withdrawn again.

“Worthington’s just waiting for you,” the Doctor rattled on.  “You’re put up at all the clubs.  People you’ve never heard of are laying out dinners and dances for you.  You’re a distinguished stranger; that’s what you are.  Welcome to our city and all that sort of thing.  I’d like to have a brass band at the station to meet you, only I thought it might jar your quiet European tastes.  Eh?  At that, I had to put the boys under bonds to keep ’em from decorating the factory for you.”

“You don’t seem to have lost any of your spirit, Dad,” said the junior, smiling.

“Noticed that already, have you?  Well, I’m holding my own, Boyee.  Up to date, old age hasn’t scratched me with his claws to any noticeable extent—­is that the way it goes?—­see ‘Familiar Quotations.’  I’m getting to be a regular book-worm, Hal.  Shakespeare, R.L.S., Kipling, Arnold Bennett, Hall Caine—­all the high-brows.  And I get ’em, too.  Soak ’em right in.  I love it!  Tell me, who’s this Balzac?  An agent was in yesterday trying to make me believe that he invented culture.  What about him?  I’m pretty hot on the culture trail.  Look out, or I’ll overhaul you.”

“You won’t have to go very far or fast.  I’ve got only smatterings.”  But the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost upon the shrewd father.

“Not so much that you’ll think Worthington dull and provincial?”

“Oh, I dare say I shall find it a very decent little place.”

But here Hal touched another pride and loyalty, quite as genuine as that which Dr. Surtaine felt for his son.

“Little place!” he cried.  “Two hundred thousand of the livest people on God’s earth.  A gen-u-wine American city if there ever was one.”

“Evidently it suits you, sir.”

“Couldn’t suit better if I’d had it made to order,” chuckled the Doctor.  “And I did pretty near make it over to order.  It was a dead-and-alive town when we opened up here.  Didn’t care much about my business, either.  Now we’re the biggest thing in town.  Why Certina is the cross-mark that shows where Worthington is on the map.  The business is sim-plee booming.”  The word exploded in rapture.  “Nothing like it ever known in the proprietary trade.  Wait till you see the shop.”

“That will be soon, won’t it, sir?  I think I’ve loafed quite long enough.”

“You’re only twenty-five,” his father defended him.  “It isn’t as if you’d been idling.  Your four years abroad have been just so much capital.  Educational capital, I mean.  I’ve got plenty of the other kind, for both of us.  You don’t need to go into the business unless you want to.”

“Being an American, I suppose I’ve got to go to work at something.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You don’t want me to live on you all my life, though, I suppose.”