"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?" "It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman." "Old King Midas?" "That's a new name for him." "It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.' As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread her hands in mock petition. Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious! Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you do with him?" "Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might need it, I'm thinking." Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a great deal to know." "If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth in them, it might be his father's meanness that's ailing him." Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. "No; Billy's almost a prodigal. His father says he hasn't the slightest idea of the value of money; it's just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him; something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why, when he was a boy--in fact, until he was almost grown--his father couldn't trust Billy with a cent." "Who said that--Billy or the king?" "His father, of course. That's why he has never taken Billy into business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs--on his own merits; and he's not going to let him into the firm until he's worth at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to a great deal." "Meaning money or character?" inquired Patsy. Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. "Are you laughing?" "Faith, I'm closer to weeping; 'twould be a lonesome, hard rearing that would come to a son of King Midas, I'm thinking. I'd far rather be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing."