...of course you’re running your own business and it’s none of my affair. But I do hate to see all the good work I’ve tried to do and the organization I’ve built leak away or go to smash through being turned over to a poor country boob with a wife who remarks that “the servants mustn’t be onto their job in this place” because they’ve neglected to set out the toothpicks along with the demitasses—and actually thinks they aren’t. ...Forge wants to learn all right and he probably will. But the New York office of the Thorne Knitting Mills isn’t the place to teach him, and because his wife is so pitifully deficient in the common fundamentals of etiquette, I’m afraid the opportunity is not for him. I’m no snob, as you know, Ted. But there are some things that simply are not done. Nathan entered the Paris offices of the knitting mills the day following and instinctively felt that something was wrong. A certain cordiality and solicitation were missing in the sales manager’s manner. His behavior, in fact, was a bit apologetic, furtive. “Nat,” began the other, “it seems to us that the Pennsylvania and middle-New York territory is in such a precarious state just now, on account of the prospect of war, that the directors have decided it for the best interests of the company not to transfer you to New York for a while. We want you to keep on as you have been going—drumming the department-store trade.” Nat’s disappointment was heart-rending,—for a moment. “Back to the road again?” he whispered wearily. “It’s sort of monotonous, Ted; the same thing over and over, week after week——” “I know, Nathan. But unfortunately there are those kinds of jobs in the world and somebody’s got to fill ’em. With war in prospect, we really don’t feel warranted in making the shift. That’s about all I can say. After all, you know, I’m under my directors.” “That’s tough,” commented Nat finally. “I’d sort of set my heart on getting a big office job like that and really showing what I feel capable of doing. And—and—well, I’ve sort of grown beyond small-town living, and New York made me feel as though it was the sort of thing I’d hungered for, without exactly knowing what made that hunger.” “I’m sorry, Nat. But business is business.” That night Mrs. Anna Forge met her son on Main Street. “...and he came down from upstairs, Nat! I’ll swear he came down from upstairs! And what could he have been doing up there that was all level and on the square?” “What were you doing up at the house, to catch him?” “Well, I—I—went up to see you and hear all about your New York trip. Milly’s bragging all over town about a swell dinner they gave you down there, and how you’re going down there to live and have swell dinners all the year ’round.” “Don’t worry, Ma, I’m not going. The Thornes have changed their minds.”