"Then you saw it was not anyone who has any business here. Who gave you authority to suspend the rules of this factory?" "Don't, father!" protested Arthur. "You certainly can't blame him. He knew I'd make trouble if he didn't obey." "He knew nothing of the sort," replied Hiram Ranger. "I haven't been dealing with men for fifty years--However, next time you'll know what to do, Jerry." "He warned me it was against the rules," interjected Arthur. A triumphant smile gleamed in the father's eyes at this vindication of the discipline of the mills. "Then he knew he was doing wrong. He must be fined. You can pay the fine, young _gentleman_--if you wish." "Certainly," murmured Arthur. "And now, let's go to lunch." "To dinner," corrected the father; "your mother and I have dinner in the middle of the day, not lunch." "To dinner, then. Anything you please, pa, only let's go." When they were at the office and the father was about to enter the inner room to change his clothes, he wheeled and said: "Why ain't you at Harvard, passing your examinations?" Arthur's hands contracted and his eyes shifted; in a tone to which repression gave a seeming lightness, he announced: "The exams, are over. I've been plucked." The slang was new to Hiram Ranger, but he understood. In important matters his fixed habit was never to speak until he had thought well; without a word he turned and, with a heaviness that was new in his movements, went into the dressing room. The young man drew a cautious but profound breath of relief--the confession he had been dreading was over; his father knew the worst. "If the governor only knew the world better," he said to himself, "he'd know that at every college the best fellows always skate along the edge of the thin ice. But he doesn't, and so he thinks he's disgraced." He lit another cigarette by way of consolation and clarification. When the father reappeared, dressed for the street, he was apparently unconscious of the cigarette. They walked home in silence--a striking-looking pair, with their great similar forms and their handsome similar faces, typical impersonations of the first generation that is sowing in labor, and the second generation that is reaping in idleness. "Oh!" exclaimed Arthur, as they entered the Ranger place and began to ascend the stone walk through the lawns sloping down from the big, substantial-looking, creeper-clad house. "I stopped at Cleveland half a day, on the way West, and brought Adelaide along." He said this with elaborate carelessness; in fact, he had begged her to come that she might once more take her familiar and highly successful part of buffer between him and his father's displeasure. The father's head lifted, and the cloud over his face also. "How is she?" he asked. "Bang up!" answered Arthur. "She's the sort of a sister a man's proud of--looks and style, and the gait of a thoroughbred." He interrupted himself with a laugh. "There she is, now!" he exclaimed.