“It ain’t natural,” he said to himself, as he now overhauled his son. “Ain’t like Jerry. Something’s the matter with him. He’s getting to be some use in the world. But he’ll go crazy, too, if he keeps up those moony ways of his. He needs a shaking up.” He instituted the shaking-up process in literal form by a resounding slap between Gerald’s narrow shoulders. But even this most maddening of all possible salutations evoked nothing but a listless “Hello, father,” from its victim. “Start Weaver off for Grafton?” queried Caleb, falling into step with his son. “Yes.” “Make out any of that padrone list I told you to frame up for me?” “I’ve just finished it. Here it is.” “Why, for a chap like you that list’s a day’s work by itself! Good boy!” No reply. Caleb glanced obliquely at the taciturn lad. The sallow, lean face, with its dark-hollowed eyes, was expressionless, dull, apathetic. “Say!” demanded Conover, “what’s the matter with you, anyhow?” “Nothing.” “Ain’t sick, or anything?” “No.” “Still grouching over that girl?” “My wife? Yes.” “Ain’t got over it yet? I’ve told you you’re well out of it. If she’d cared anything for you she’d never have settled with my New York lawyer for $60,000 and withdrawn that fool alienation suit she was starting against me, or signed that general release. You’re well out of it. I’ll send you up to South Dakota after the campaign’s all over and let you get a divorce on the quiet. No one around here’ll ever know you was married, and in the long run the experience won’t hurt you. You’ve acted pretty decent lately, Jerry, and I’m not half sorry I changed my mind on that ‘heavy-father’ stunt and didn’t kick you out. After all, one marriage more or less is more of an accident than a failing, so long as folks don’t let it get to be a habit. You acted like an idiot. But bygones are bygones, so cut out the sulks. Cheap chorus girls weren’t made for grown men to marry.” “I’ll thank you to say nothing against her,” intervened Gerald stiffly, with the first faint show of interest his father had observed in him for weeks. “Just as you like,” assented Caleb, in high, good humor, glad to have broken even so slightly into the other’s armor of apathy. “In her case, maybe, least said the better. So you’re still home-sicking for her—and for New York, eh?” “Yes.” “Still feel your own city ain’t good enough for you?” “What place is for a man who has lived in New York?” “Rot! ‘What place is?’ About ten thousand places! And some seventy million Americans living in those places are as good and as happy and stand pretty near as good a chance of the pearly gates as if they had the heaven-sent blessing of living between the North and East rivers.” “Yes?” There was no interest and only absent-minded query in Gerald’s monosyllable. Listlessness had again settled over him. Word and mental attitude jarred on the Railroader.