Her handsome features wore that look of animation the spectacle of “getting on” ever inspired in the lady, her eyes glittered like pieces of highly polished, brown onyx, and while she put food into her mouth with the right hand, the left, by a common practice, executed five-finger exercises up and down the cloth, between her plate and the end of the table. But to-night she broke into a fantasia—the pliant little finger curled and tossed its tip in air, playing a soundless pæon to celebrate Harry’s entrance into the business of life. For Mar, in circumstances like these, to hold wide a different door—had there ever been a moment less propitious? “You ought to have shown me the letter before you sent it off,” he said. “I would, only I knew you’d think I ought to catch the afternoon mail. There was barely time. And the letter was all right—I’m sure it was. I told Trenn either he or Siegel had got to pay me from the start. I don’t ask much, I said, but I’m worth something if I _am_ a raw hand. I wrote the sort of letter Trenn can show to Siegel. I piled it on about the interruption to my studies, and about father’s preferring me to stick at books a year or two more.” “It was ingenious of you to discover that fact,” said Mar, quietly. “Oh, they mustn’t think I’m too keen, you know.” Mrs. Mar nodded as she wound up her silent accompaniment with a chord. But if she followed the implied course of reasoning, not so the boy’s father. “If you’ve written in that vein,” said Mar, slowly, “it seems to me still more premature to have ordered your outfit.” “Oh, that’s all O.K.,” said Harry, genially condescending to soothe his father’s fears. “Of course I’m _going_. Trenn’ll understand. He’s got a long head, old Trenn has!”—and he exchanged secure smiles with his mother—“I had to write as I did, don’t you see”—again Harry obligingly reduced his tactics to simpler terms to meet the slower comprehension of his father—“just to make Siegel understand he needn’t expect to get me for nothing. I’m not coming in on the ‘little brother racket.’ No, sir! Old Siegel’s got to pay me something from the start, or how can I be supposed to know it’s a good thing? Siegel’s got to _show me_! I’m from Missouri.” He made the boast with his pleasant boyish laugh, pushed back his chair, and walked about, hands in pockets, head in air, describing to his mother how fellows often did better to take their pay in cattle, and little by little get their own herd, and little by little get land. Often they ended by buying out those other fellows who started with capital. She would see! He and Trenn weren’t going to take anything on trust. “They’ll find they’ve got to _show_ us,” he said, squaring himself before a lot of imaginary Siegels. “We’re from Missouri!”