"You made a good enough job," he protested mildly. "How can you look at me and think you could have done any better?" She stopped her unpacking to laugh. "It just spoils a person for other forms of joking to live with one of you dry Crittendens. Other people's humor seems so flamboyant. I _like_ the Crittendens," she pronounced judicially, "though I did waste about twenty years of my young life trying to make myself into one. I'm glad you're one. But if you try to make Martha into one--" "Martha's one already," he told her triumphantly. "We're exactly alike--the way we think and do things. That's why we get on so well together." At this Neale's mother looked at him so hard that he felt a little annoyed, and turned the talk back to its earlier channel. "How else would you have brought me up, I'd like to know?" "I'd have taken dynamite to you," she informed him briskly. "Dynamite?" "Oh, you don't understand. And I daresay it would have been too early anyhow. You'll probably get your share of dynamite when your turn comes." She changed the subject: "How's business? Seriously!" Seriously he told her of the results of his promotion six months before from the "intelligence bureau," as he called it, to the real business of life, to buying and selling. "The only real money is in that," he told her, warming as he spoke. "All those other jobs, office jobs, don't lead you anywhere. Buying and selling, especially selling, that's where you get ahead. I'm earning twice what I did, and by this time next year I'll be doing twice what I'm doing now. I may soon be able to do a little on the side, on my own hook, pick up something good and dispose of it well. Grandfather is sure I can. He may have some tips for me later on. Grandfather is a wise old scout." Mother laid some underwear away in a drawer. As she shut it, she asked casually: "Do you read any Emerson nowadays, Neale?" How in the world did Mother know he had ever read Emerson? "No, I don't," he said. She noted the shortness of his tone with raised eyebrows, and began to hang up her dresses in the closet.