"Oh, damn it!" he cried impatiently, dismayed to feel that with the memory of his mother, he was aware as though of a palpable presence in the room there, of women ... of women as different from men, emotionally exacting, wanting something different from men, with some fine-spun impossible ideal of what could be had out of human nature, troubling, hampering the real business of life ... and yet all the time an inevitable part of things! For an instant he felt brutally angry with them, with their superfine weakening notions, and had for the first time the exasperated feeling that they were an element in life which you could neither do anything with, nor do without. The ewig-weibliche,--good heavens! All it did was to snarl things up! Neale got up from the bed and went over to the wash-stand, amazed at himself, his fit of fury passed, unable to conceive what had started him off on such an explosion. What under the sun possessed him, veering around like a crazy weather-cock from one high-strung mood to another, more shifts of feeling in a day than he had ever used to know in a year! He would put it all out of his mind, all! He simply would not allow himself to think of it again, to think of all that, he would not! He went hastily down the stairs and fell to talking business with Grandfather, talking to very good purpose, too. To-day their projects went far beyond the little tract of second-growth oak they had first thought of. Grandfather, wily old spider, at the center of a wide-flung web, knew many tips which he was more than willing to pass on to his favorite, Neale,--Neale who had the other half of the combination and could sell at top prices what Grandfather could buy at rock-bottom. He was in fact delighted with Neale's ideas and the energy with which Neale laid his plans. "Why, you're worth two of your father!" he cried exultantly, as they sat again, the next morning on the porch and went into details. "I never could see why Dan'l didn't get on better! He never seemed to care enough about it, and by thunder, you got to care if you're going to get anywhere." The old man paused, took breath, and brought out, with an attempt to sound casual, "I've thought sometimes 'twas your mother made him that way. She's a nice girl, your mother is, Neale, but I never thought she _pushed_ your father the way she ought to." He glanced at Neale a little apprehensively, but the young man said nothing. He was following out a thought, not entirely new, a guess which he had subconsciously made before, that there was a long hostility between his mother and his grandfather. The idea stirred a great deal in his own head, which he felt no desire to examine.