“Tracy has found out that I’m doing the Minster business, and he’s cut up rough about it. I shouldn’t be surprised if the firm came a cropper over the thing.”

Horace Boyce confided this information to Mr. Schuyler Tenney on the forenoon following his scene with Reuben, and though the language in which it was couched was in part unfamiliar, the hardware merchant had no difficulty in grasping its meaning. He stopped his task of going through the morning’s batch of business letters, and looked up keenly at the young man.

“Found out—how do you mean? I told you to tell him—told you the day you came here to talk about the General’s affairs.”

“Well, I didn’t tell him.”

“And why?” Tenney demanded, sharply. “I should like to know why?”

“Because it didn’t suit me to do so,” replied the young man; “just as it doesn’t suit me now to be bullied about it.”

Mr. Tenney looked for just a fleeting instant as if he were going to respond in kind. Then he thought better of it, and began toying with one of the envelopes before him.

“You must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,” he said, smilingly. “Why, man alive, nobody dreamed of bullying you. Only, of course, it would have been better if you’d told Tracy. And you say he is mad about it?”

“Yes, he was deucedly offensive. I daresay it will come to an open row. I haven’t seen him yet to-day, but things looked very dickey indeed for the partnership last night.”

“Then the firm hasn’t got any specified term to run?”

“No, it is terminable at pleasure of both parties, which of course means either party.”

“Well, there, you can tell him to go to the old Harry, if you like.”

“Precisely what I mean to do—if—”

“If what?”

“If there is going to be enough in this Minster business to keep me going in the mean while. I don’t think I could take much of his regular office business away. I haven’t been there long enough, you know.”

“Enough? I Should think there would be enough! You will have five thousand dollars as her representative in the Thessaly Manufacturing Company. I daresay you might charge something for acting as her agent in the pig-iron trust, too, though I’d draw it pretty mild if I were you. Women get scared at bills for that sort of thing. A young fellow like you ought to save money on half of five thousand dollars. It never cost me fifteen hundred dollars yet to live, and live well, too.”

Horace smiled in turn, and the smile was felt by both to suffice, without words. There was no need to express in terms the fact that in matters of necessary expense a Boyce and a Tenney, were two widely differentiated persons. Only perhaps. Horace had more satisfaction out of the thought than did his companion.

“Oh, by the way,” he added, “I ought to tell you, Tracy knows in some way that you are mixed up with me in the thing. He mentioned your name—in that slow, ox-like way of his so that I couldn’t tell how much he knew or suspected.”

Mr. Tenney was interested in this; and showed his concern by separating the letters on his desk into little piles, as if he were preparing to perform a card tricks:

“I guess it won’t matter, much,” he said at last. “Everybody’s going to know it pretty soon, now.” He thought again for a little, and then added: “Only, on second thought, you’d better stick in with him a while longer, if you can. Make some sort of apology to him, if he needs one, and keep in the firm. It will be better so.”

“Why should I, pray?” demanded the young man, curtly.

Mr. Tenney again looked momentarily as if he were tempted to reply with acerbity, and again the look vanished as swiftly as it came. He answered in all mildness:

“Because I don’t want Tracy to be sniffing around, inquiring into things, until we are fairly in the saddle. He might spoil everything.”

“But how will my remaining with him prevent that?”

“You don’t know your man,” replied Tenney. “He’s one of those fellows who would feel in honor bound to keep his hands off, simply because you were with him. That’s the beauty of that kind of chap.”

This tribute to the moral value of his partner impressed Horace but faintly. “Well, I’ll see how he talks to-day,” he said, doubtfully. “Perhaps we can manage to hit it off together a while longer.” Then a thought crossed his mind, and he asked with abruptness:

“What are you afraid of his finding out, if he does ‘sniff around’ as you call it? What is there to find out? Everything is above board, isn’t it?”

“Why, you know it is. Who should know it better than you?” Mr. Tenney responded.

Horace reasoned to himself as he walked away that there really was no cause for apprehension. Tenney was smart, and evidently Wendover was smart too, but if they tried to pull the wool over his eyes they would find that he himself had not been born yesterday. He had done everything they had suggested to him, but he felt that the independent and even captious manner in which he had done it all must have shown the schemers that he was not a man to be trifled with. Thus far he could see no dishonesty in their plans. He had been very nervous about the first steps, but his mind was almost easy now. He was in a position where he could protect the Minsters if any harm threatened them. And very soon now, he said confidently to himself, he would be in an even more enviable position—that of a member of the family council, a prospective son-in-law. It was clear to his perceptions that Kate liked him, and that he had no rivals.

It happened that Reuben did not refer again to the subject of yesterday’s dispute, and while Horace acquiesced in the silence, he was conscious of some disappointment over it. It annoyed him to even look at his partner this morning, and he was sick and tired of the partnership. It required an effort to be passing civil with Reuben, and he said to himself a hundred times during the day that he should be heartily glad when the Thessaly Manufacturing Company got its new machinery in, and began real operations, so that he could take up his position there as the visible agent of the millions, and pitch his partner and the pettifogging law business overboard altogether.

In the course of the afternoon he went to the residence of the Minsters. The day was not Tuesday, but Horace regarded himself as emancipated from formal conditions, and at the door asked for the ladies, and then made his own way into the drawing-room, with entire self-possession.

When Mrs. Minster came down, he had some trivial matter of business ready as a pretext for his visit, but her manner was so gracious that he felt pleasantly conscious of the futility of pretexts. He was on such a footing in the Minster household that he would never need excuses any more.

The lady herself mentioned the plan of his attending the forthcoming meeting of the directors of the pig-iron trust at Pittsburg, and told him that she had instructed her bankers to deposit with his bankers a lump sum for expenses chargeable against the estate, which he could use at discretion. “You mustn’t be asked to use your own money on our business,” she said, smilingly.

It is only natural to warm toward people who have such nice things as this to say, and Horace found himself assuming a very confidential, almost filial, attitude toward Mrs. Minster. Her kindness to him was so marked that he felt really moved by it, and in a gracefully indirect way said so. He managed this by alluding to his own mother, who had died when he was a little boy, and then dwelling, with a tender inflection in his voice, upon the painful loneliness which young men feel who are brought up in motherless homes. “It seems as if I had never known a home at all,” he said, and sighed.

“She was one of the Beekmans from Tyre, wasn’t she? I’ve heard Tabitha speak of her often,” said Mrs. Minster. The words were not important, but the look which accompanied them was distinctly sympathetic.

Perhaps it was this glance that affected Horace. He made a little gulping sound in his throat, clinched his hands together, and looked fixedly down upon the pattern of the carpet.

“We should both have been better men if she had lived’,” he murmured, in a low voice.

As no answer came, he was forced to look up after a time, and then upon the instant he realized that his pathos had been wasted, for Mrs. Minster’s face did not betray the emotion he had anticipated. She seemed to have been thinking of something else.

“Have you seen any Bermuda potatoes in the market yet?” she asked. “It’s about time for them, isn’t it?”

“I’ll ask my father,” Horace replied, determined not to be thrown off the trail. “He has been in the West Indies a good deal, and he knows all about their vegetables, and the seasons, and so on. It is about him that I wish to speak, Mrs. Minster.”

The lady nodded her head, and drew down the comers of her mouth a little.

“I feel the homeless condition of the General very much,” Horace went on. “The death of my mother was a terrible blow to him, one he has never recovered from.”

Mrs. Minster had heard differently, but she nodded her head again in sympathy with this new view. Horace had not been mistaken in believing that filial affection was good in her eyes.

“So he has lived all these years almost alone in the big house,” the son proceeded, “and the solitary life has affected his spirits, weakened his ambition, relaxed his regard for the part he ought to play in the community. Since I have been back, he has brightened up a good deal. He has been a most loving father to me always, and I would do anything in the world to contribute to his happiness. It is borne in upon me more ............