Jessie. Dad!

Bob. You’ve brought the boy up wrong.

Dad. So you propose to blame me!

Jack (appears in doorway Left clad in ragged anil dirty overcoat). Of course, Dad.  It really isn’t fair to scold other people for your own blunder.

Dad. Oh, there you are! (Notices Jack’s clothes.) What the devil is this?

Jack. What, Dad?

Dad. Drunk again, sir?  Rolling in the gutter?  And on your birthday too!

Jack. Dad—­

Dad. Look at him!  A hundred and eighty dollars I pay to a Broadway tailor to make this young hopeful an overcoat, and look at what he does with it!  I prepare a birthday party, and invite all his friends, and see the condition in which he comes to welcome them!  Do you wonder my patience is exhausted?  Do you wonder—­

Jessie. Dad, you don’t understand!

Dad. No, I don’t understand!  How could I be expected to understand?  How can an old man hope to keep up with a youth so brilliant—­a youth who goes to college and ties firecrackers to the tails of goats!  A youth who comes on his birthday looking like a tramp—­

Jessie. Listen, Dad—­this is a joke—­

Dad. Everything’s a joke to my son!  But I tell you I’m tired of his jokes.  I mean to make him understand that his days of tomfoolery are over!  Do you realize it—­here he is, twenty-one years of age, when he should be coming into possession of the fortune his mother left him—­and he’s tying fire-crackers to the tails of goats!  And I—­I am trustee of the money, and have to decide whether he’s fit to have it or not!  I know that if I give it to him I ruin him for life—­I start him on a career of drunkenness and idleness!  Look at him as he stands there—­and imagine him the owner of a quarter of a million dollars!  And under his mother’s will the only choice I have is to give it to him, or turn it over to a Home for Cats!

Jessie. Please, Dad!

Dad. Can I honestly say that one is more foolish than the other?  Wouldn’t I be helping him if I gave the money to the cats, and let my son go out and earn his living as best he can?  Let him go down to my office and earn his twelve dollars a week, the same as any other young jackass—­

Jack (stepping forward). Dad, don’t you really think it’s time you let me get a word in?

Dad. I’m tired of your words, young man.

Jack. You won’t be troubled with them any more.  I’m going to take myself out of your way.  I don’t want your quarter of a million dollars, and I don’t want your twelve a week.

Dad. Indeed, sir!  And what may this mean?

Jack. It means that I’m going out into the world as a hobo.

Dad.  What?

Jack. That’s it!

Dad. Clever!  Upon my word, a clever scheme! (To the others.) Look at him!  The nerve of him!  He knows he’s misbehaved, and that I’ll be angry—­so he goes and puts on a masquerade costume, and tries to frighten me with a threat of turning hobo!