dear boy. I’ll get on. You owe me a large debt of gratitude. I’m thrusting a great responsibility on you. It should be the making of you.” Bob had his secret doubts. “Get out and hustle, dear boy. It’s up to you, now!” And he spread out his hands in care-free fashion and smiled blandly. No Buddha could have appeared more complacent—only instead of a lotus flower, Bob’s dad held in his hand a long black weed, the puffing of which seemed to afford a large measure of ecstatic satisfaction. “Go!” He waved the free hand. “My blessing on your efforts.”

Bob started to go, and then he lingered. “Perhaps,” he said, “you can tell me what I am going to do?”

“Don’t know.” Cheerfully.

“What can I do?” Hopelessly.

“Couldn’t say.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Ha! ha!” Dad laughed, as if son had sprung a joke. “Well, that is a condition experience will remove. Experience and hard knocks,” he added.

Bob swore softly. His head was humming. No heroic purpose to get out and fight his way moved him. He didn’t care about shoveling earth, or chopping down trees. He had no frenzied desire to brave the sixty-below-zero temperature of the Klondike in a mad search for gold. In a word, he didn’t feel at all like the heroes in the books who conquer under almost impossible conditions in the vastnesses of the “open,” and incidentally whallop a few herculean simple-minded sons of nature, just to prove that breed is better than brawn.

“Of course, I could give you a little advice, Bob,” said the governor softly. “If you should find hustling a bit arduous for one of your luxurious nature, there’s an alternative. It is always open to a young man upon whom nature has showered her favors.”

“Don’t know what you mean by that last,” growled Bob, who disliked personalities. “But what is the alternative to hustling?”

“Get married,” said dad coolly.

Bob changed color. Dad watched him keenly.

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