“Yes.”

“That I worked and loved it, and love it still, and that you are lazy and love your ease.  Don’t be offended—­” Here Peter laid his hand on the boy’s knee.  He waited an instant, and not getting any reply, kept on:  “What you want to do is to go to work.  It wouldn’t have been honorable in you to let your father support you after you were old enough to earn your own living, and it isn’t honorable in you, with your present opinions, to live on your uncle’s bounty, and to be discontented and rebellious at that, for that’s about what it all amounts to.  You certainly couldn’t pay for these comforts outside of this house on what Breen & Co. can afford to pay you.  Half of your mental unrest, my lad, is due to the fact that you do not know the joy and comfort to be got out of plain, common, unadulterated work.”

“I’ll do anything that is not menial.”

“What do you mean by ’menial’?”

“Well, working like a day-laborer.”

“Most men who have succeeded have first worked with their hands.”

“Not my uncle.”

“No, not your uncle—­he’s an exception—­one among a million, and then again he isn’t through.”

“But he’s worth two million, they say.”

“Yes, but he never earned it, and he never worked for it, and he doesn’t now.  Do you want to follow in his footsteps?”

“No—­not with all his money.”  This came in a decided tone.  “But surely you wouldn’t want me to work with my hands, would you?”

“I certainly should, if necessary.”

Jack looked at him, and a shade of disappointment crossed his face.

“But I couldn’t do anything menial.”

“There isn’t anything menial in any kind of work from cleaning a stable up!  The menial things are the evasions of work—­tricks by which men are cheated out of their just dues.”

“Stock gambling?”

“Yes—­sometimes, when the truth is withheld.”

“That’s what I think; that’s what I meant last night when I told you about the faro-bank.  I laughed over it, and yet I can’t see much difference, although I have never seen one.”

“So I understood, but you were wrong about it.  Your uncle bears a very good name in the Street.  He is not as much to blame as the system.  Perhaps some day the firm will become real bankers, than which there is no more honorable calling.”

“But is it wrong to want to fish and shoot and have time to read.”

“No, it is wrong not to do it when you have the time and the money.  I like that side of your nature.  My own theory is that every man should in the twenty-four hours of the day devote eight to work, eight to sleep and eight to play.  But this can only be done when the money to support the whole twenty-four hours is in sight, either in wages, or salary, or invested securities.  More money than this—­that is the surplusage that men lock up in their tin boxes, is a curse.  But with that