“Well, I don’t want you to want me to want you to,” returned the other, laughing.  “But there’s no hurry.”

“To tell the truth, I’m rather bored with doing nothing.  And if I can be of any use to you in the business—­”

“You’re ready to resume the partnership,” his father concluded the sentence for him.  “That was the foundation of it all; the old days when I did the ‘spieling’ and you took in the dollars.  How quick your little hands were!  Can you remember it?  The smelly smoke of the torches, and the shadows chasing each other across the crowds below.  And to think what has grown out of it.  God, Boyee!  It’s a miracle,” he exulted.

“It isn’t very clear in my memory.  I used to get pretty sleepy, I remember,” said the son, smiling.

“Poor Boyee!  Sometimes I hated the life, for you.  But there was nobody to leave you with; and you were all I had.  Anyway, it’s turned out well, hasn’t it?”

“That remains to be seen for me, doesn’t it?  I’m rather at the start of things.”

“Most youngsters would be content with an unlimited allowance, and the world for a playground.”

“One gets tired of playing. And of globe-trotting.”

“Good!  Do you think you can make Worthington feel like home?”

“How can I tell, sir?  I haven’t spent two weeks altogether in the place since I entered college eight years ago.”

“Did it ever strike you that I’d carefully planned to keep you away from here, and that our periods of companionship have all been abroad or at summer places?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve never spoken of it.”

“No.”

“Good boy!  Now I’ll tell you why.  I wanted to be absolutely established before I brought you back here.  Not in business, alone.  That came long ago.  There have been obstacles, in other ways.  They’re all overcome.  To-day we come pretty near to being king-pins in this town, you and I, Hal.  Do you feel like a prince entering into his realm?”

“Rather more like a freshman entering college,” said the other, laughing.  “It isn’t the town, it’s the business that I have misgivings about.”

“Misgivings?  How’s that?” asked the father quickly.

“What I can do in it.”

“Oh, that.  My doubts are whether it’s the best thing for you.”

“Don’t you want me to go into it, Dad?”

“Of course I want you with me, Boyee.  But—­well, frank and flat, I don’t know whether it’s genteel enough for you.”

“Genteel?” The younger Surtaine repeated the distasteful adjective with surprise.

“Some folks make fun of it, you know.  It’s the advertising that makes it a fair mark.  ‘Certina,’ they say.  ’That’s where he made his money.  Patent-medicine millions.’  I don’t mind it.  But for you it’s different.”

“If the money is good enough for me to spend, it’s good enough for me to earn,” said Hal Surtaine a little grandiloquently.