“On the other hand,” continued his father, not heeding the interruption, “he says he’ll give you every chance to learn, though he appears to discount nearly everything I said about your knowledge of fossils and of paleontology in general. I don’t know, but perhaps I did lay it on a bit thick. So it’ll be up to you, son, to make good my words.” “You bet I’ll do everything I can,” declared the lad excitedly. “Have I got a regular appointment, Father?” “You have not,” was the emphatic reply. “Museum authorities don’t appoint boys to official positions on a scientific expedition, even when they’re as lanky and overgrown as you. A man has got to be a simon-pure expert before he can get a Museum appointment, and even then, he’s got to work up through an assistantship. No, my boy, you’re just accompanying your uncle and I’m footing the bill. “I’ve always been willing to hand out cash freely for the scientific work of the Museum and I had sent a cheque for five thousand to the fund for this very expedition, before you had said anything to me about your Patagonia idea. That subscription helped, to a certain extent, but even so I don’t believe I could have persuaded the Director to let you go along unless he was convinced that you were a promising young paleontologist. You know I was away last week?” “Yes.” “I went to New York to see the Director of the American Museum about you. One of your friends—an assistant curator, who knows our Director down here—spoke up in your favor.” “I can guess who that was!” “Maybe, but you won’t find out from me.” The financier laughed. “The American Museum director had to have his little joke, of course,” he continued. “Do you know what he told me— “‘Mr. Hunt,’ he said, and his eye had a twinkle I’ve seen there several times, ‘a precocity in paleontology is a species new to me.’ “Of course, Perry, I had to back water a bit.” “You needn’t have, Father,” protested Perry. “I don’t want to brag, but I’ll just show him!” “That’s the right spirit, my son,” replied the other, “but you’ve a long road to travel. I went just far enough along that road myself to see what a long journey it is.” For a moment the counting-room and the figures and the complexities of modern business life faded away from the old financier’s mind and he looked forward unseeingly and reminiscently. “I’d have liked to have gone on with it,” he added, “but other things came between.” Perry kept silent a minute or two, then said, with boyish gentleness: “We’ll be in on it together, Father, anyway. And I feel great about it, really.” “Of course we’ll be in on it together, as you put it,” the other said, shaking himself free of memories, “and you’ll have to make a record for yourself out there. It’s a good thing for you that you’re so far ahead in your school work.” Perry looked up surprisedly. “How’s that?” he asked. His father smiled quietly.