"Thoughtless? Fatiguing? Ha ha!" Wolfgang thought it great fun. "That's a mere trifle to me. I've really missed my vocation, you know. You ought not to have put me into an office. I ought to have been a swimmer, a rider or--well, a cowboy in the Wild West." He had said it in joke without meaning anything, but it seemed to the man, who suddenly looked at him with eyes that had grown suspicious, that something serious, an accusation, was concealed behind the joke. What did he want then? Did he want to gallop through life like an unrestrained boy? "Well, your sporting capacities will be of use to you when you are a soldier," he said coolly. "At present what you have to do here is of more importance. Have you drawn up the contract for delivery for White Brothers? Show it to me." "Directly." Wolfgang disappeared; but it was some time before he returned. Had he only done the work now, which he had been told was urgent and was to be done carefully? The ink was still quite fresh, the writing was very careless, even if legible; it was no business hand. Schlieben frowned; he was strangely irritable to-day. At any other time he would have been struck by the celerity with which the boy had finished the work he had neglected; but to-day the careless writing, the inkspots in the margin, the slipshod manner in which it had all been done, which seemed to him to point to a want of interest, vexed him. "Hm!" He examined it once more critically. "When did you do this?" "When you gave me it to do." The tone in which Wolfgang said this was so unabashed that it was impossible to doubt it. The man felt quite ashamed of himself. How a seed of suspicion grows! He had really wronged his son this time. But that question of the money still remained, the boy had not been open and honest in that. It seemed to the father that he could not quite rely on his son any more now. It was hardly noon when Wolfgang left the office again. He had arranged to meet a couple of acquaintances in the Imperial Cafe not far from the Linden; he would have to have something to eat, and whether he had his lunch there or somewhere else was of no consequence; a sandwich, which was all his father took with him from home, was not sufficient for him after swimming and riding. Then he showed himself again at the office for an hour in the afternoon, but in his tennis clothes this time, in white shoes, a racket in his hand.