"If you will let me come in, even by a little edge only, I am sure you won't regret it," Walter went on. "Can't you recall, by looking back, your own determination to succeed, and how far it carried you, how strong it made you? Well, that is the way I feel to-day! You ought to be able to comprehend me. You've been over the same road." "The same road!" repeated Chase, ironically. "Let's size it up a little. I was taken out of school before I was fourteen--when my father died. From that day I had not only to earn every crumb of bread I ate, but help to earn the bread of my sisters too. Before I was eighteen I had worked at half a dozen different things, and always at the rate of thirteen or fourteen hours a day. By the time I was twenty I was old; I had already lived a long and hard life. Now your side: A good home; every luxury; school; college; Europe!" "You think that because I have been through Columbia, and because I once had a yacht (the yacht was in reality my uncle's), I shall never make a good business man," replied Walter. "Unfortunately, I have no means of proving to you the contrary, unless you will give me the chance I ask for. I don't pretend, of course, to have anything like your talents; they are your own, and unapproached. But I do say that I have ability; I _feel_ that I have." "It's sizzling, is it?" commented Chase. "Why don't you put it into the business you're in already, then; the steamship firm of Willoughby, Chase, & Co.? Boom that; put on steam, and boom it for all you're worth; your uncles and I will see you through. You say you only want a chance; why on earth don't you take the one that lies before you? If you wish to convince me you know something, _that's_ the way." "The steamship concern is too slow for me; I have looked into it, and I know. I might work at it for ten years, and with the small share I have in it I should not be very rich," Walter answered. "I'm in a hurry! I am willing to give everything on my side--all my time and my strength and my brains; but I want something good on the other." "Now you're shouting!" "The steamship firm is routine--regular; that isn't the way you made _your_ money," Walter went on. "My way is open to everybody. It isn't covered by any patent that I know of," remarked Chase, in his dry tones. "Yes, it is," answered Walter, immediately taking him up. "Or rather it was; the Bubble Baking-Powder was very tightly patented." Chase grinned a little over this sally. But he was not moved towards the least concession, and Walter saw that he was not; he therefore played his last card. "I have a great deal of influence with my uncles, I think; especially with my uncle Nicholas." "Put your money on Nicholas Willoughby, and you're safe, every time," remarked Chase, in a general way. "I don't know whether you and Patterson care for more capital in developing your California scheme?" Walter went on. "But if you do, I could probably help you to some."