His uncle repeated it, with a postscript. "Oh, I've always told you you could have anything you wanted within reason that I could pay for. But from what I been told"--his eyes twinkled--"wives ain't always reasonable. And it does seem to me that when a young man gets to be twenty five or six, and never did a lick of work in his life, and loafs around clubs and plays polo just because he's got a rich uncle, why, it's a sort of a reflection on both of 'em. Seem so to you?" Henry glanced up nervously and down again. "To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about it." "Say," said his uncle, confidentially. "Neither had I. Not 'till Mirabelle told me you went off on this party because Anna Barklay was goin' to be there.... Now I had pretty hard sleddin' when I was your age; I've kind of liked to see you enjoy yourself. But Mirabelle--Now I said before, I ain't on _her_ side, and I ain't on _your_ side; I had the thing out with you once or twice already, and I guess you know what my angles are. Only if Mirabelle's got any grounds, maybe I ought to say it over again.... You been out of college four years now, and you tried the automobile business for two months and the bond business for two weeks and the real-estate business for two minutes, and there you quit. You spent five, six thousand a year and _that_ was all right, but I admit I don't like the idea of your gettin' married on nothin' but prospects, specially when _I_'m all the prospects there is. Sound fair to you?" Henry nodded, with much repression, "You couldn't be unfair if you tried, Uncle John." "Well, you was always open to reason, even when you was in kindergarten.... Now, in some ways I don't approve of you any more'n Mirabelle does, but she wants me to go too blamed far. She wants me to turn you loose the way my father did me. She wants me to say if you should ever marry without my consent I'll cut you out of my will. But that's old stuff. That's cold turkey. Mirabelle don't know times have changed--she's so busy with that cussed Reform League of hers, she don't have time to reform any of her own slants about things." He rolled his cigar under his tongue. "Well, I'm goin' to compromise. Before you get involved too deep, I want you to know what's in my mind. I don't believe it's the best thing for either of us for me to go on bein' a kind of an evergreen money-bush. And a man that's earnin' his own livin' don't have to ask odds of anybody. Don't you think you better bundle up your courage and get to work, Henry?" Henry was twiddling his watch-chain. "It hasn't been a matter of _courage_, exactly--"