California, Southern -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction; Petroleum industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
Bunny, as we know, possessed the requirements of a fraternity career; he
had Anglo-Saxon features, and plenty of big sweaters, and drove to
school in a car of that year’s model. He was taken up by an exclusive
society, and was soon in demand for whatever was going on. He was
enormously interested in everything; he had never imagined there were so
many young people in the world before, and he wanted to know them all.
He raced about with them from one thing to another, and watched with
open eyes and listened with open ears to everything that came from
either the teachers or the pupils. But all the time there was something
which set him apart from the rest—something sober and old-fashioned and
“queer.” It came, no doubt, from his knowing so much about the oil
business; Bertie was right in her cruel remark that he had oil stains
under his finger-nails. He would never share the idea of other darlings
of luxury, that “money grows on trees;” he knew that it comes by hard
and dangerous work. Also, Bunny had to meet the situation at home, which
he understood quite clearly; his father wasn’t at all sure that high
school was the best place for a boy, and was watching and listening all
the time, to see what sort of ideas Bunny was getting. So the boy was
always comparing the school’s kind of education with Dad’s kind, and
which was really right?
Before starting out in his new career Bunny received what parents know
as a “serious talk”; and that was curious and puzzling. First, Dad was
going to give him a car, and there must be rules about it. He must give
his word never to exceed the speed limit, whether in the city or
outside; and that was certainly a curious case of the double standard of
morals! But Dad met it frankly; he was mature, and could judge about
speeds; moreover, he had important business for his excuse, but Bunny
was to start for school early, and the rest of the time he would be
driving for pleasure. He might take out others in his car, but he must
never let anyone drive the car but himself; Dad had no money to run a
free garage for a high school fraternity, and it would be convenient for
Bunny to be able to say, once for all, that his father had laid down the
law in that matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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