"I'll look in there. Good night, Mr. Necker." "Don't hurry away on my account, Mr. Balfe. I'd like you, or any friend of Mr. Welkie and his family, to hear what I have to say. It's a straight open-and-shut proposition I've got." "Then we'll try to be back to hear some of it. Good-by for a while, then." The door closed behind him. "Let's sit down, Mr. Necker." "Thanks. And how did you leave that boy of yours?" "In his little bed, with his pillow jammed up close to his window-screen, singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' to himself and looking out on the lights of the fleet. He's afraid they'll steam away before he's seen his fill of them, and to-night he's not going to sleep till he hears taps, he says." "It must be a great thing to have a boy like him, and to plan for his future and to look forward to what he'll be when he's grown up." Welkie looked his interrogation. "Surely, Welkie. A boy of brains he'll be. I don't have to look at a man or a boy twice. Brains and will power. You could make a great career for him, Welkie--a great engineer, say, if he was started right. But, of course, you'll be in a position by and by to see that he gets the start." "Started right? What does he want when he has health and brains and a heart?" "All fine, but he'll need more than that these days." "Are these days so different?" "Different, man! Why, the older a country is, the more civilized it is, the more education means, the more social position counts, the more money counts." "How much more?" "A heap more. Listen. Your father on twenty-five hundred a year, say, could put his children through college, couldn't he? On twenty-five hundred a year to-day a man with a family has to battle to keep out of the tenement districts. A dozen years from now, if you're getting no more money than you're getting now, you'll be wondering if you won't have to take that boy out of school and put him to work. Isn't that so?" Welkie made no answer. "All right. But before I go any farther, let me say that I want you, Mr. Welkie, for our new job." "What's wrong with the man you've got?" "He won't do. You're the one man we want, and if there's money enough in our strong box, we're going to get you. And now that I've got that off, let me show you where it is for your higher--I say your higher, not alone your moneyed--interests to come with us, Mr. Welkie. There's that boy of yours--you'd surely like to see him a great man?" "I surely wouldn't dislike it."