“But he is my father!” said John Milton hotly.
“Look here,” said the editor good-naturedly, “I'd like to oblige you, but it isn't BUSINESS, you know,—and this IS, you understand,—PROPRIETOR'S BUSINESS too! Of course I see it might stand in the way of your making up to the old man afterwards and coming in for a million. Well! you can tell him it's ME. Say I WOULD put it in. Say I'm nasty—and I AM!”
“Then it must go in?” said John Milton with a white face.
“You bet.”
“Then I must go out!” And writing out his resignation, he laid it before his chief and left.
But he could not bear to tell this to his wife when he climbed the hill that night, and he invented some excuse for bringing his work home. The invalid never noticed any change in his usual buoyancy, and indeed I fear, when he was fairly installed with his writing materials at the foot of her bed, he had quite forgotten the episode. He was recalled to it by a faint sigh.
“What is it, dear?” he said looking up.
“I like to see you writing, Milty. You always look so happy.”
“Always so happy, dear?”
“Yes. You are happy, are you not?”