It was an attitude for which Bob was not prepared. Neither was he prepared for the defacement of all that had been glowing in the lad’s countenance. Jennie had warned him against expecting the ruddy bright-eyed Teddy of the bank, but he hadn’t looked for this air of youth blasted out of youthfulness. It was still youth, but youth marred, terrified, haunted, with a fear beyond that of gibbering old age. With his lovingness and quickness of pity, Bob sought for a line by which he could catch on to the lad’s interest. "I asked my father to send you the best counsel in New Jersey, and I believe he’s picked out Stenhouse." Teddy regarded him grimly. "Yes, he did." It seemed as if he meant to say no more, when, with a sardonic grunt, he went on, "Something like a guy who smashes a machine and then gets the best mechanician in the world to come and patch it up." "Yes—possibly—it may be. Only, there’s this to consider—that no one smashes a machine on purpose." "No, I don’t suppose he does. Only, it’s all the same to the machine whether it’s been smashed on purpose or by accident—so long as it’ll never run again." Bob considered this. "You might say that of a machine—a dead thing from the start. You can’t say it of a human being, who’s alive from the beginning. See?" "No, I don’t see." "And I don’t know that I can explain. I’m only sure that a machine can be done for, and that a human being can’t be. You can come to a time when it’s no use doing anything more for the one; but you can never reach such a time with the other. With _him_, you may make mistakes or you may do him a great wrong, but you can’t stop trying to put things right again." "And you think you can put things right again for me?" "I don’t know what I can do. I haven’t an idea. Very likely I can’t do anything at all. I merely came back from South America to do what I could." "Did you feel that you had to—because you’d married Jennie?" "That was a reason. It wasn’t the only one." "What else was there?" "I’m not sure that I can tell you. A lot of the things we do we do not from reason, but from instinct. But if you don’t want me to try to take a hand—" Under the dark streaks that blotted out what had once been Teddy’s healthy coloring, a slow flush began to mantle. "I don’t want to be—to be bamboozled." "Of course you don’t. But how could I bamboozle you?" There was no explanation. Unable to base his distrust on any other ground than that Bob was the son of the man who had dismissed Josiah Follett from the bank, Teddy fell silent again. He could not afford to reject the least good will that came his way, and yet his spirit was too sore to accept it graciously. Some of this young Collingham divined. He began to see that as the boy was suffering and he wasn’t, it was not for him to take offense. On the contrary, he must use all his ingenuity to find the way to make his appeal effectively.