Jane went to him and patted his head gently, as she spoke: "That is nature, dear--the fawn hiding in the woods; we must trust to Jennie's good sense, and the good blood in Neal. My, but his sisters are proud of him! Last week Lizzie was telling me Neal's wages had been increased to ten dollars a week--and I don't suppose their father in all of his life ever had that much of a steady income. The things the family is planning to do with that ten dollars a week brought tears of joy to my eyes. Neal's going to have his mother-in-law on his side, anyway--just as you had yours. I know now how mother felt." But John Barclay did not know how mother felt, and he did not care. He knew how father felt--how Lycurgus Mason felt, and how the father of Mrs. Lycurgus Mason felt; he felt hurt and slighted, and he could not repress a feeling of bitterness toward the youth. All the world loves a daughter-in-law, but a father's love for a son-in-law is an acquired taste; some men never get it. And John Barclay was called away the next morning to throttle a mill in the San Joaquin Valley, and from there he went to North Dakota to stop the building of a competitive railroad that tapped his territory; so September came, and with it Jeanette Barclay went back to school. The mother wondered what the girl would do with her last night at home. She was clearly nervous and unsettled all the afternoon before, and made an errand into town and came back with a perturbed face. But after dinner the mother heard Jeanette at the telephone, and this is the one-sided dialogue the mother caught: "Yes--this is Miss Barclay." "Oh, yes, I didn't recognize your voice at first." "What meeting?" "Yes--yes." "And they are not going to have it?" "Oh, I see." "You were--oh, I don't know. Of course I should have felt--well, I--oh, it would have been all right with me. Of course." Then the voice cheered up and she said: "Why, of course--come right out. I understand." A pause and then, "Yes, I know a man has to go where he is called." "Oh, she'll understand--you know father is always on the wing." "No--why, no, of course not--mother wouldn't think that of you. I'll tell her how it was." "All right, good-by--yes, right away." And Jeanette Barclay skipped away from the telephone and ran to her mother to say, "Mother, that was Neal Ward--he wants to come out, and he was afraid you'd think it rude for him to ask that way, but you know he had a meeting to report and thought he couldn't come, and now they've postponed the meeting, and I told him to come right out--wasn't that all right?"