Dan gave a start. “In Boston?” “Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a place of our own, and to put you in charge.” Something in the young man's face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, “Would that be distasteful to you?” “Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care to be in Boston.” He lifted his face and looked his father full in the eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong. The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind, he withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk. “Well,” said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Boston had no particular significance for him, “I don't know that I care to have you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to have you look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, and see their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in our ways. I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of the business, but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from your grandfather; your mother has it.” “Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting,” said Dan. “Well, go to France, and see how those fellows do it. Go to London, and look up William Morris.” “Yes, that would be very nice,” admitted the young fellow, beginning to catch on. “But I didn't suppose--I didn't expect to begin life with a picnic.” He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but at the last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He said to himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay and bright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he had noticed the undercurrent yesterday when he was laughing and joking with those girls at Portland. “Oh, I don't want you to buckle down at once,” said his father, smiling. “If you'd decided upon the law, I should have felt that you'd better not lose time. But as you're going into the business, I don't mind your taking a year off. It won't be lost time if you keep your eyes open. I think you'd better go down into Italy and Spain. Look up the old tapestries and stamped leathers. You may get some ideas. How would you like it?” “First-rate. I should like it,” said Dan, rising on the waft of his father's suggestion, but gloomily lapsing again. Still, it was pleasing to picture himself going about through Europe with a broken heart, and he did not deny himself the consolation of the vision.