"More so," said Harding in his rough voice. "His money gathers and grows like a snowball. But he is beginning to think about enjoying it--he is evidently growing old. He says it is time for him to have a holiday. He never took one for some wonderful time--eighteen years I think it was; but he has not worked quite so hard of late." "Well, he deserves a little pleasure now." "I don't know about that. If a man makes himself a slave to money-getting I don't see that he deserves any pleasure. He deserves his money." The old gentleman laughed. "Let the poor fellow amuse himself a little--if he can. The question is whether he can, after a life of hard work. What is his idea of pleasure?" "Yachting. He discovered quite lately that he wasn't sea-sick; he hadn't leisure to find it out before. So he took to yachting. He can enjoy his dinner as well on board a boat as anywhere else, he can talk about his yacht, and he can spend any amount of money." "You haven't any sympathy with his hobby?" "I? I've no money to spend, and I _am_ sea-sick." "You are? I remember now," said Mr. Hayes, thoughtfully, "that your grandfather and John Rothwell had a great dislike to the water." "Ah? It's a family peculiarity? A proud distinction?" Harding laughed quietly, looking away. He was accustomed to laugh at himself and by himself. "It's something to be able to invoke the Rothwell ancestry to give dignity to one's qualms," he said. Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. He did not really require respect for the Rothwell sea-sickness, but it hardly pleased him that the young fellow should scoff at his ancestry, just when it had gained him admission to Mitchelhurst Place. "Bad taste," he said to himself, and he returned abruptly to the money-making uncle. "I suppose Mr. Harding has a son to come after him?" "Yes, there's one son," Reynold replied, with a contemptuous intonation. "And does he take to the business?" "I don't know much about that. I fancy he wants to begin at the yachting end, anyhow." "Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at young Harding as if a question were on his lips; but the other's face did not invite it, and the subject dropped. There was a pause, and then the elder man began to talk of some Roman remains which had been discovered five miles from Mitchelhurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, balanced himself idly, and listened with dreary acquiescence. It was some time before the Roman remains were disposed of and they rejoined Barbara. They startled her out of her uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half-lying, half-sitting, with all her black draperies about her, too much absorbed in a novel to hear their approach. Harding, on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand that propped her head, before Miss Strange was on her feet and ready for her company.