“I don’t mean to go away,” Bunny hastened to put in. “There’s plenty of colleges around here, and I can live at home. And we can come up for week-ends and holidays, the same as always. I’m not going to lose my interest in Paradise, Dad, but I really won’t be happy to buckle down to business until I’ve had a chance to learn more.” Dad had to give way to that. There was that curious war in his own mind, a mingling of respect for knowledge, of awe in the presence of cultured people, along with fear of “notions” that Bunny might get, strange flights of “idealism” that would make him unfit to be the heir and custodian of twenty million dollars worth of Ross Consolidated! CHAPTER X THE UNIVERSITY I Southern Pacific University had been launched by a California land baron as a Methodist Sunday-school; its professors were all required to be Methodists, and it featured scores of religious courses. It had grown enormous upon the money of an oil king who had bribed half a dozen successive governments in Mexico and the United States, and being therefore in doubt as to the safety of his soul gave large sums to professional soul-savers. Apparently uncertain which group had the right “dope,” he gave equally to both Catholics and Protestants, and they used the money to denounce and undermine each other. If Dad had known that his son was to be educated by the donations of Pete O’Reilly, he would have been at once amused and reassured. Not knowing about it, he paid a visit to the place, to see at least the outside of Bunny’s future environment. The university had started far out in the suburbs of Angel City, but now the community had grown around it—which meant another large endowment, contributed by all the rent-payers of the city. Its buildings were elaborate, which impressed Dad; the fact that they were crowded with five thousand young men and women impressed him still more, for when Dad saw a great number of people doing the same thing, he concluded it was something normal and safe. Still more reassuring was his meeting with President Alonzo T. Cowper, D.D., Ph.D., LL.D. For Dr. Cowper was in the business of interviewing dads; he had been selected by his millionaire trustees because of his skill in interviewing trustees. Dr. Cowper knew how a scholar could be at the same time dignified and deferential. Our Dad, being thoroughly money-conscious, read the doctor’s mind as completely as if he had been inside it: if this founder of Ross Consolidated is pleased with the education his son receives, he may some day donate a building for teaching oil chemistry, or at least endow a chair of research in oil geology. And that seemed to Dad exactly the proper attitude for a clergyman-educator to take; everybody in the world was in the business of getting money, and this was a very high-toned way.