"It’s good stock," he said, finally; "none better betwixt the Bowling Green and Patroon Van Courtlandt’s old shebang. There’s money, too; and an opera box and a bit of a shack at Newport. What kind of a lad is it?" "He can look me in the face," said Rivett. "Otherwise he looks like everybody else of his sort, and probably resembles them, too. Ah!"—he broke out angrily—"these sleek-headed, tailor-made, smooth-faced young pups from New York, with their pleasant manners when they want anything, and their ways and means and by-ways and ten-cent brains—God! Dineen, do they really ever turn into men? Answer me that! You’ve lived long enough to see a new-born snob grow to be thirty. Do they ever turn into anything except the harmless fools they’re born?" Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam, while the smoke from the cigar in his cheek rose to the ceiling in a straight, thin column. [Illustration: "Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam."] "Some of them become men," he said deliberately. "The most o’ them is born spots and rots; or, if they’re not, college addles ’em. But, God be praised! if it wasn’t for them the good people of Reno, Palm Beach, and Paris, France, would starve entirely.... Jacob, they say there’s a use even for the San José scale; and cursing would become a lost art barring the mosquito." "What do you know about young Inwood?" asked Rivett. "Nothing; he’s a broker." "Then we’ve nothing to learn, I guess," said Rivett dryly, "unless he gets into the papers.... Well, my wife likes him.... She’s always right, John. I’ll go and talk to her presently.... What were you saying about young Edgerton before my daughter came?" "I said that he’s the same as all the Edgertons. By jimmy! I started him on ink wells to see would he stand for it, and he was there every morning at seven; and he cleaned those ink wells and desks till nobody knew them—with his busted arm and all. Then I set him at the ledgers, and I let him stew for a week. A week was enough to see a good man wasting his fist and eyes at fifteen per. "’G’wan into the designing room,’ I said to him, using Doolan as meejum for my remarks; and I let him stew there with his compass and his tracing paper, doping out the work of worse than he. "Then I gave Williamson the kitty-wink. ’Give us a pair of gates for a gentleman’s estate,’ said Williamson, very damn polite, knowing who was backin’ the lad for a place.... They’re using the sketch now." "I told you so," said Rivett calmly. "Ah, go on! I told you so! Let it go at that, Jacob. So I talked to Everly, and Everly sent him into the laboratory. When he isn’t there he’s nosing around the shops, or asking questions of Cost and McCorkle over in Jersey, or he’s investigating the Holmes Construction plant." "He’s got his eye on the game."