"Yes, I suppose she would have been. She's been dead ten years. How hard is it to get into a law office in San Francisco?" he added, shifting. Judge Tiffany met the direct hint with a direct parry. "We have five thousand attorneys in San Francisco and only five hundred of them are making a living." "Yes, I know it is overcrowded," said Bertram Chester, not a particle abashed. After black coffee on the piazza, the two college boys swung off down the lane, Bertram smoking rapidly at one of the Judge's cigars. "He can be almost anything," said the Judge, meditatively. "Even a gentleman?" gently inquired Mrs. Tiffany. "Perhaps that isn't necessary in our Western way of life. Thank God, we haven't come yet to the point where the caste of Vere de Vere is necessary to us." "I wish I had it," he went on, a little wistfully. "Gentility? why Edward, if anyone--" "Oh no, my dear. I may say that was half the trouble. So many considerations came up; so many things I didn't want to do, so many it didn't seem right to do. I was forever turning aside to wrestle with my feelings on those things, and forever hesitating. Half the time, after the opportunity was gone by, I discovered that my scruples had been foolish; but I always discovered afterward. I don't believe that success lies that way in a new world." He had risen; and now his wife rose and stood beside him. "You are forever talking as though you were a failure. I know you're not. Everyone knows you're not." "The parable of the ten talents, Mattie. Not how much we've got, but how much interest we've earned on our powers. However, we had that out long ago, my dear. Yes, I know. I promised not to talk and think this way. But if I'd been like this boy! He'll seize the thing before him. No side considerations in his mind!" "It is a policy," said Mrs. Tiffany in a tone of injured partisanship, "that will land him in jail." "No," said the Judge, "success does not lead towards jails. He'll look out for that." CHAPTER III