lad!” 

 For the first time Clement looked his father fairly in the face—and pleased him. “Well, sir,” he said, “if things go wrong I hope you won’t find me wanting. Nor ungrateful for what you have done for us. I know how much it is. But I’m not Bourdillon, and I’ve not got his head for figures.” 

 “You’ve not got his application. That’s the mischief! Your heart’s not in it.” 

 “Well, I don’t know that it is,” Clement admitted. “I suppose you couldn’t——” he hesitated, a new hope kindled within him. He looked at his father doubtfully. 

 “Couldn’t what?” 

 “Release me from the bank, sir? And give me a—a very small capital to——” 

 “To go and idle upon?” the banker exclaimed, and thumped the ledger in his indignation at an idea so preposterous. “No, by G—d, I couldn’t! Pay you to go idling about the country, more like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, as I am told you do, than a man! Find you capital and see you loiter your life away with your hands in your pockets? No, I couldn’t, my boy, and I would not if I could! Capital, indeed? Give you capital? For what?” 

 “I could take a farm,” sullenly, “and I shouldn’t idle. I can work hard enough when I like my work. And I know something about farming, and I believe I could make it pay.” 

 The other gasped. To the banker, with his mind on thousands, with his plans and hopes for the future, with his golden visions of Lombard Street and financial sway, to talk of a farm and of making it pay! It seemed—it seemed worse than lunacy. His son must be out of his mind. He stared at him, honestly wondering. “A farm!” he ejaculated at last. “And make it pay? Go back to the clodhopping life your grandfather lived before you and from which I lifted you? Peddle with pennies and sell ducks and chickens in the market? Why—why, I don’t know what to say to you?” 

 “I like an outdoor life,” Clement pleaded, his face scarlet. 

 “Like a—like a——” Ovington could find no word to express his feelings and with an effort he swallowed them down. “Look here, Clement,” he said more mildly; “what’s come to you? What is it that is amiss with you? Whatever it is you must straighten it out, boy; there must be an end of this folly, for folly it is. Understand me, the day that you go out of the bank you go to stand on your own legs, without help from me. If you are prepared to do that?” 

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