"No, it's a part of the initiation," said Phil softly, "for youngsters who are taken on by that railroad after they leave college. I expected it and I've had my revenge by setting other graduate engineers at it myself. And, Uncle Peter," Phil was smiling and showing a row of well-set teeth through his tan, "let's you and I understand each other and be friends. Perhaps you think that I sometimes think that you'll leave your fortune to me. I know that you will not. Of course, I should like it, but there's no reason why you should give it to me more than to any one else. All I ask is an invitation to the clubhouse when it's dedicated. Why, if I had gone to work for you I might have been thinking that I might inherit something and you might have known I was thinking that, which would have been most uncomfortable for both of us. Then if the tariff had ruined the business and you had lost everything, consider how disappointed I would be and what heartbreak the knowledge of my disappointment would be to you in your poverty!" Peter grew red during a silence which was broken by the sound of a chuckle. Evidently Dr. Sanford had seen something in the garden that amused him, for he was looking in that direction. Mrs. Sanford was aghast. "Of all the nerve!" exclaimed Peter. "I tell you I'm not used to having anybody talk to me that way! It's a d----" "Go ahead, Peter!" remarked Dr. Sanford suavely. "It's just as bad to think it. If you say one hard you may not have a dozen pent-up ones against you on Judgment Day." "There seems no pleasing you!" Peter blurted incontinently to Phil. "Then do you want me to hover about and play the good young man and agree with everything you say, hoping you will mention me in your will?" "I--I want you to shut up!" snapped Peter. "Or, you can keep on talking if you want to, as it's time for me to go!" and he took his injured dignity down the walk to his waiting car. After he had gone Dr. Sanford gave his chuckle such full vent that it broke into an explosion little short of a snort. "I suppose there is something of the anarchist in me," he said; "but I confess to liking to see a self-conscious, self-made millionaire a trifle miserable, without, I trust, in the least compromising my standing as a good Christian." "Peter was certainly funny," assented Mrs. Sanford, smiling now. Then they forget Peter, these three. They forget everything but the fact that they were together. The detail of their talk Phil could hardly have recollected the next day, but every sentence of it came to him when he was prostrate in that noiseless and sightless world in France. After the proud old pair were under the coverlets that night their theme was the same that it had been a thousand times. Following generations of professors, doctors, and lawyers had come the man of action. Philip had succeeded out in that forbidding world of business and strife: this was the wonderful thing to them.